Marxist thought

[Silent Member]

Boobas

[brian trageskin]

Just now, Silent Member said:

Boobas

 

[chenGOD]

1 hour ago, cyanobacteria said:

furthermore, the elimination of alienated wage labor entirely in favor of free associative labor.  this requires very advanced forms of communism to achieve and a heavily developed means of production. this should be clear from even a casual reading of Marx so I don't get the point of these questions

How do you achieve the elimination of alienation to work product in the service sector (which constitutes 71% of the American working population)? I'm not talking about just a dollar amount.

Like providing health care, well and good, and somewhat easy to see the result of the service. IT support? Maybe not so much.

[brian trageskin]

26 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

How do you achieve the elimination of alienation to work product in the service sector (which constitutes 71% of the American working population)?

1 hour ago, Silent Member said:

Boobas

 

 

[zlemflolia]

30 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

How do you achieve the elimination of alienation to work product in the service sector (which constitutes 71% of the American working population)? I'm not talking about just a dollar amount.

Like providing health care, well and good, and somewhat easy to see the result of the service. IT support? Maybe not so much.

many people in health care do it because they like to help people.  it's so hard because there is so much work and only so many hours in a day, and they are understaffed.  with free universal education, we can have more doctors.  look how cuba did it.  they have more doctors than us.  as for "IT support" we eliminate it completely by merely creating a superior culture of engineering practices unheard of under capitalism.  IT support is a sector for a reason - it makes money.  with enhanced education and enhanced engineering practices, it can be eliminated.  furthermore, once again, some people like doing it and will do it in an unalienated way. 

this is all hard I know but it's hard to create new economic modes of production. don't throw out the "everyone will sit on their couch under communism" trash because I wouldn't you wouldn't most people wouldn't. we need to eliminate work as work, and achieve work as life, as marx similarly phrased it

[chenGOD]

13 minutes ago, cyanobacteria said:

we eliminate it completely by merely creating a superior culture of engineering practices unheard of under capitalism.

Oh that sounds easy. I wonder why no one’s ever thought of that before. 

[zlemflolia]

8 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

Oh that sounds easy. I wonder why no one’s ever thought of that before. 

do you have an actual refutation or what? current the anarchy of the market creates many competing solutions to achieve the same thing, and there is a perverse incentive to deprioritize engineering quality in favor of allowing the IT service sector to continue existing.  do you work in engineering or IT?

it's not about thinking about it.  it's about the fact that for the vast majority of people working in these sectors, they are alienated from their labor and forced to do what their bosses tell them, which is not about decreasing consumer costs, increasing efficiency, and creating high quality solutions that last into perpetuity.  in fact they are actively shitting up the previous ecosystems and failing to follow agreed upon web standards, instead creating mutually incompatible ecosystems across companies. 

if ALL code written was Free and Open Source it would be open for inspection but anyone.  we could merge code currently existing in competing companies, delete bad code, outcast certain codebases entirely, and create a distributed monolithic repo of all the world's code, which can be improved in parallel and engineered with a global mindset to improve the quality of the software as a technology rather than creating customer solutions or other bullshit capitalist software concepts.  people can stop working on short term profit generating features and instead focus entirely on fixing bugs and cleaning up the global repo.

ask any engineer and they will tell you how much their job, or rather their bosses, PREVENTS them from doing engineering the right way, because they literally do not have enough time in the day to keep things high quality while also meeting customer demands their bosses pass down.  it creates code bloat, spaghetti code, and unmaintainable incomprehensible legacy codebases.  these need to go.  the engineering field is currtently harmed by capitalism, not empowered. we don't need people being forced to work on programming for the profit incentive.  we need only those who want to program for programming's sake to do it.  same for any other engineering discipline.  we need engineers to be able to say "no, we need to make these improvements, it will increase costs 20% but last for centuries and be safer" and have it listened to

Edited April 21, 2021 by cyanobacteria

[cichlisuite]

Quote

We are proactive, innovative, ambitious, accountable, meritocratic, reliable and social. The ideal candidate is an entrepreneurial and highly professional expert, who can prioritize work, possess excellent communication skills, is a strong negotiator, comfortable managing multiple, the most knowledgeable and demanding global clients.

Key responsibilities

• Collecting and preparing reports from Global Partners/Platforms 
• Matching and importing delivery data of Global Partners/Platforms 
• Resolving matching issues with the local teams Resolving discrepancies with the closing team
• Supporting the local operations teams with importing local Partners/Platforms and/or exceptions on global ones 
• Collaborating with other departments to identify opportunities for process improvements and recommend optimization

Core and Functional Skills and Knowledge

• Advanced English both oral and written 
• Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, IT, Marketing, Advertising or related fields
• MS Excel – advanced knowledge
• Basic Experience in Data mining
• Knowledge of databases or SQL/API approaches are a plus
• Computer skills
• Detail Oriented 

Benefits

• Work in a dynamic team in a fast-paced industry of an international company with multi-cultural teams around the world ranging from Argentina to Vienna to Hong Kong
• Work with innovative tech solutions
• Competitive salary and possibility of professional growth

 

 

[cichlisuite]

edit: just stumbled upon this job ad for a junior position. It speaks for itself. The Benefits section has three points, the last one describing the only real benefit, and even that is highly questionable if it's a junior position. I mean, how is "working with innovative tech solutions" a benefit? I might be using double monitors and a custom software. Incredible. And I was afraid I will be scribbling my analysis on a piece of paper. Why I as a worker receive so little, but have to give so much? What does this tell us, oh wise watmmers?

[chenGOD]

1 hour ago, cyanobacteria said:

do you have an actual refutation or what? current the anarchy of the market creates many competing solutions to achieve the same thing, and there is a perverse incentive to deprioritize engineering quality in favor of allowing the IT service sector to continue existing.  do you work in engineering or IT?

it's not about thinking about it.  it's about the fact that for the vast majority of people working in these sectors, they are alienated from their labor and forced to do what their bosses tell them, which is not about decreasing consumer costs, increasing efficiency, and creating high quality solutions that last into perpetuity.  in fact they are actively shitting up the previous ecosystems and failing to follow agreed upon web standards, instead creating mutually incompatible ecosystems across companies. 

if ALL code written was Free and Open Source it would be open for inspection but anyone.  we could merge code currently existing in competing companies, delete bad code, outcast certain codebases entirely, and create a distributed monolithic repo of all the world's code, which can be improved in parallel and engineered with a global mindset to improve the quality of the software as a technology rather than creating customer solutions or other bullshit capitalist software concepts.  people can stop working on short term profit generating features and instead focus entirely on fixing bugs and cleaning up the global repo.

ask any engineer and they will tell you how much their job, or rather their bosses, PREVENTS them from doing engineering the right way, because they literally do not have enough time in the day to keep things high quality while also meeting customer demands their bosses pass down.  it creates code bloat, spaghetti code, and unmaintainable incomprehensible legacy codebases.  these need to go.  the engineering field is currtently harmed by capitalism, not empowered. we don't need people being forced to work on programming for the profit incentive.  we need only those who want to program for programming's sake to do it.  same for any other engineering discipline.  we need engineers to be able to say "no, we need to make these improvements, it will increase costs 20% but last for centuries and be safer" and have it listened to

My good man, the company that creates a computing system that needs no IT support ever, will literally become the richest company in existence overnight.

The idea of having something last for centuries is, I’m assuming, hyperbole on your part. The culture of buying new shiny things all the time is a little silly (my 2013 MacBook Air still meets all my needs quite well for example), but there are improvements in technology that couldn’t have been implemented 10 years ago, that can be now because of the progress of technology. Compare candy bar style cell phones to smart phones. You couldn’t have programmed for the iPhone 12 10 years ago, or the latest top of the line Huawei/Samsung etc.

You understand how trite this turn of phrase is right? “merely creating a superior culture of engineering practices unheard of under capitalism.” 

 

 

8 minutes ago, cichlisuite said:

edit: just stumbled upon this job ad for a junior position. It speaks for itself. The Benefits section has three points, the last one describing the only real benefit, and even that is highly questionable if it's a junior position. I mean, how is "working with innovative tech solutions" a benefit? I might be using double monitors and a custom software. Incredible. And I was afraid I will be scribbling my analysis on a piece of paper. Why I as a worker receive so little, but have to give so much? What does this tell us, oh wise watmmers?

It doesn’t sound like the job requires much analysis at all. Sounds like a data scraping job with some QA. 

[cichlisuite]

4 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

It doesn’t sound like the job requires much analysis at all. Sounds like a data scraping job with some QA. 

The position is for a junior analyst I stumbled upon (not my area). The description wants to give an impression almost as if one would sit at strategic conferences with senior staff.

[zlemflolia]

20 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

My good man, the company that creates a computing system that needs no IT support ever, will literally become the richest company in existence overnight.

The idea of having something last for centuries is, I’m assuming, hyperbole on your part. The culture of buying new shiny things all the time is a little silly (my 2013 MacBook Air still meets all my needs quite well for example), but there are improvements in technology that couldn’t have been implemented 10 years ago, that can be now because of the progress of technology. Compare candy bar style cell phones to smart phones. You couldn’t have programmed for the iPhone 12 10 years ago, or the latest top of the line Huawei/Samsung etc.

You understand how trite this turn of phrase is right? “

merely creating a superior culture of engineering practices unheard of under capitalism.” 

 

 

It doesn’t sound like the job requires much analysis at all. Sounds like a data scraping job with some QA. 

of course you can program for platforms that didn't exist before, why are you making up false statements? most of the code running on them existed before they were created.  anyway let's get back to your main premise, that nobody will do IT work under communism.  if they don't, people will just go without IT work and learn how to do it themselves.  if they don't, people won't have working technology.  it's pretty simple.  most people don't have it right now anyway except for outdated smart phones which get no support.  as if capitalism offers IT support, obsoleting its hardware and software every few years.  you have no idea what youre talking about on this particular topic and are still trying to make up reasons to oppose what ive said.

[zlemflolia]

also a very first world centric view.  oh no, no tech support, I have to fix things myself.  oh well

[chenGOD]

53 minutes ago, cichlisuite said:

The position is for a junior analyst I stumbled upon (not my area). The description wants to give an impression almost as if one would sit at strategic conferences with senior staff.

Oh I believe you that the job was for a junior analyst position, it just doesn’t seem like much analysis is required. 
Also the degree requirement is ridiculous, but sadly standard these days. 

[chenGOD]

41 minutes ago, cyanobacteria said:

you can program for platforms that didn't exist before, why are you making up false statements? most of the code running on them existed before they were created

Man, are you being deliberately dense? No one was coding for the iPhone 12 in 2010. 
 

Speaking of false statements...

42 minutes ago, cyanobacteria said:

your main premise, that nobody will do IT work under communism.

You’ll have to point out exactly where I said that (I didn’t say it).

 

43 minutes ago, cyanobacteria said:

as if capitalism offers IT support, obsoleting its hardware and software every few years. 

I just provided an example of a piece of hardware (my MacBook Air 2013) that a) meets my computing needs, b) runs the latest Mac OS just fine, and c) which I can still get support for. I’m sure that’s not the only piece of hardware that’s approaching 10 years old that can still receive support. In fact I know it isn’t, as plenty of legacy hardware in mainframes still receives support and isn’t obsolete. 

[zlemflolia]

1 hour ago, chenGOD said:

Man, are you being deliberately dense? No one was coding for the iPhone 12 in 2010. 
 

Speaking of false statements...

You’ll have to point out exactly where I said that (I didn’t say it).

 

I just provided an example of a piece of hardware (my MacBook Air 2013) that a) meets my computing needs, b) runs the latest Mac OS just fine, and c) which I can still get support for. I’m sure that’s not the only piece of hardware that’s approaching 10 years old that can still receive support. In fact I know it isn’t, as plenty of legacy hardware in mainframes still receives support and isn’t obsolete. 

look this has nothing to do with marxism but YES, they were coding for iPhone 12 in 2010 when it didn't exist.  a core foundation of writing software is making it last long into the future in a variety of scenarios and platforms with different hardware metric tradeoffs.  I guarantee you there is code in the iPhone 12 that was written before 2010, that's how software works, it's layer upon layers of code all being used to either run on the iPhone 12 or to compile or modify the code that ends up being ran on the iPhone 12.  it's truly a "standing upon the shoulders of giants" technology

apple has abnormally good support and makes up a small fraction of the IT support field it's really not something to focus on

[chenGOD]

59 minutes ago, cyanobacteria said:

look this has nothing to do with marxism but YES, they were coding for iPhone 12 in 2010 when it didn't exist.  a core foundation of writing software is making it last long into the future in a variety of scenarios and platforms with different hardware metric tradeoffs.  I guarantee you there is code in the iPhone 12 that was written before 2010, that's how software works, it's layer upon layers of code all being used to either run on the iPhone 12 or to compile or modify the code that ends up being ran on the iPhone 12.  it's truly a "standing upon the shoulders of giants" technology

apple has abnormally good support and makes up a small fraction of the IT support field it's really not something to focus on

I'm not talking about platforms, of course there's code from iOS that has remained the same or similar (though likely much changed when Apple started using 64-bit chips), I'm talking about writing application code specifically for the iPhone 12's hardware features, such as the LIDAR scanner, or creating AR apps.

Or programming for drive-by-wire vehicles, or for VR games, or any number of technologies that didn't exist.

SCADA Systems have very good support, and backward compatibility with existing hardware is critically important. Medical devices have very good IT support (or are supposed to). And Apple has 39% of the smartphone share in the US, so it's not really a small fraction of the IT support field. It shows very clearly that IT support does exist under capitalism, contrary to your wild claim.

Look, if you just want to continue shitting on capitalism, I can change the title of the topic. Maybe it should be changed, after all, Marxism is a theory of capitalism and its evolution. Or you could try and explain how to implement this highly advanced form of communism, when so far all basic forms of communism have failed (because the people implementing communism have tried to do so from an agricultural base instead of an industrial base I guess would be your answer). Or you could try some econ theory to show how Marxist thought can be implemented to make more efficient use of the factors of production?

 

[zlemflolia]

45 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

I'm not talking about platforms, of course there's code from iOS that has remained the same or similar (though likely much changed when Apple started using 64-bit chips), I'm talking about writing application code specifically for the iPhone 12's hardware features, such as the LIDAR scanner, or creating AR apps.

Or programming for drive-by-wire vehicles, or for VR games, or any number of technologies that didn't exist.

SCADA Systems have very good support, and backward compatibility with existing hardware is critically important. Medical devices have very good IT support (or are supposed to). And Apple has 39% of the smartphone share in the US, so it's not really a small fraction of the IT support field. It shows very clearly that IT support does exist under capitalism, contrary to your wild claim.

Look, if you just want to continue shitting on capitalism, I can change the title of the topic. Maybe it should be changed, after all, Marxism is a theory of capitalism and its evolution. Or you could try and explain how to implement this highly advanced form of communism, when so far all basic forms of communism have failed (because the people implementing communism have tried to do so from an agricultural base instead of an industrial base I guess would be your answer). Or you could try some econ theory to show how Marxist thought can be implemented to make more efficient use of the factors of production?

 

Implementing drivers is not differentiable from implementing hardware given the 1:1 mapping between inputs and outputs according to the hardware's external behavioral specification.  of course there is some code that has to be implemented for new hardware peripherals added to a platform to the extent that that hardware does not follow well defined pre-existing communication protocols which would render this code trivial and cross-platform.  this is really getting pedantic and I still have no idea why you brought up the topic of IT support given that apparently it wasn't out of criticality pointed at whether it will exist under communism, so what is it?

nobody knows how to implement communism yet, it requires experimentation and a more advanced means of production.  you're wanting me to do something contrary to marxism in order to justify marxism.  I will not pontificate on how it will be done beyond the extent that I'm doing it out of speculative purposes, and expecting anyone to enters the realm of ideology rather than material reality

programmers will exist under communism, I've already explained how when all code is free and open source, the programming profession will improve since all code can be audited and programmers aren't limited into small per-company siloes where within each company there are a thousand reinventions of various types of wheels and varying levels of quality control not following agreed upon engineering standards.  software engineering in particular is so underdeveloped due to a lack of state intervention and regulation, itself a cause of capitalism's tendency towards capital centralization and thus regulatory capture. 

[chenGOD]

7 hours ago, cyanobacteria said:

the topic of IT support given that apparently it wasn't out of criticality pointed at whether it will exist under communism, so what is it?

The topic was brought up as an illustration of alienation from labour, and how can you resolve it under Marx without simply providing more money (while noting that wages should rise), as it is difficult to determine the value of one transaction in the service sector.

 

7 hours ago, cyanobacteria said:

I will not pontificate on how it will be done beyond the extent that I'm doing it out of speculative purposes, and expecting anyone to enters the realm of ideology rather than material reality

So you have no ideas on the implementation and are instead happy to recite Marx as some form of...what, intellectual masturbation? Like I'm much more interested in how applying Marx's interpretation of Ricardian labour theory of value or Smith's theory of price to modern economic structures (given that the services sector was not a large part of the economy when Marx was around) would actually improve things, and how that could be implemented.

 

7 hours ago, cyanobacteria said:

capitalism's tendency towards capital centralization and thus regulatory capture. 

So you're actually a neoclassicist (the theory of regulatory capture developed by George Stigler, who was influential in the Chicago school of economics) ?

[Extralife]

[chenGOD]

8 hours ago, cyanobacteria said:

I've already explained how when all code is free and open source, the programming profession will improve since all code can be audited and programmers aren't limited into small per-company siloes where within each company there are a thousand reinventions of various types of wheels and varying levels of quality control not following agreed upon engineering standards. 

Also I’d like to point out that you have simply stated this as if it is an a priori truth, no where have you demonstrated this to be true. 

9 minutes ago, Extralife said:

Look who else is getting in on Marxist thought: https://www.malaymail.com/news/life/2021/04/21/world-domination-us-sex-toy-company-programmes-its-doll-nova-to-talk-about/1968249

[zlemflolia]

5 hours ago, chenGOD said:

The topic was brought up as an illustration of alienation from labour, and how can you resolve it under Marx without simply providing more money (while noting that wages should rise), as it is difficult to determine the value of one transaction in the service sector.

 

So you have no ideas on the implementation and are instead happy to recite Marx as some form of...what, intellectual masturbation? Like I'm much more interested in how applying Marx's interpretation of Ricardian labour theory of value or Smith's theory of price to modern economic structures (given that the services sector was not a large part of the economy when Marx was around) would actually improve things, and how that could be implemented.

 

So you're actually a neoclassicist (the theory of regulatory capture developed by George Stigler, who was influential in the Chicago school of economics) ?

why do you think alienation from labor has to do with how much youre paid? it encompasses far more than that. why are oyu asking questions that can be resolved by just reading marx? read the economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm

why are you viewing marxism as something to apply as iterative reformist modifications to the present state of things? rosa luxembourg has analyzed whether this is worth bothering with in Reform Or Revolution, (i have not read it yet)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/

hijacking marxism for liberal purposes is not marxist

regulatory capture is a well defined and meaningful idea, using the term doesnt "make me a neoclassicist" and what I "am" doesnt matter anyway

Edited April 22, 2021 by cyanobacteria

[zlemflolia]

4 hours ago, chenGOD said:

Also I’d like to point out that you have simply stated this as if it is an a priori truth, no where have you demonstrated this to be true. 

Look who else is getting in on Marxist thought: https://www.malaymail.com/news/life/2021/04/21/world-domination-us-sex-toy-company-programmes-its-doll-nova-to-talk-about/1968249

explain the converse then.  let's say we have all code free and open source, inspectable by anyone.  explain how the code quality gets better if it's split up into small groups where only wage workers in groups of maybe size 5 can see a given component of the code at a given time.  explain how this is better

[chenGOD]

1 hour ago, cyanobacteria said:

why do you think alienation from labor has to do with how much youre paid?

I don't and nowhere did I say that - I'm asking how Marxism would solve alienation from labour (that is the removal of yourself from the product of your labour), especially in regard to the service sector. Because Marx doesn't break down his analysis by sector, and because of the change in the distribution of labour, I think this is an interesting question.

1 hour ago, cyanobacteria said:

regulatory capture is a well defined and meaningful idea

It was defined by neoclassicists who were strongly influential in the Chicago school of economics, which is about as far away from Marxism as it's possible to get. So it's very interesting that you would use the term - especially as Marxism does not see a decentralization of capital (workers collectives would be susceptible to the same issues).

1 hour ago, cyanobacteria said:

let's say we have all code free and open source, inspectable by anyone.  explain how the code quality gets better if it's split up into small groups where only wage workers in groups of maybe size 5 can see a given component of the code at a given time. 

Specialization in production leads to greater efficiency. Obviously you need some entity to put the complex system together, but people who work on say, voice recognition software don't necessarily need to know how payment processing software works, or how to program on bare metal.

[cwmbrancity]

2 hours ago, cyanobacteria said:

explain the converse then.  let's say we have all code free and open source, inspectable by anyone.  explain how the code quality gets better if it's split up into small groups where only wage workers in groups of maybe size 5 can see a given component of the code at a given time.  explain how this is better

They get free water and an IT infrastructure so they don’t have to long division on paper?