they don’t talk as much about the overall rate of surplus value falling

The rate of surplus-value does not necessarily correlate with the rate of profit.

The reason the rate of profit tends to fall is because constant capital © tends to increase its fraction of the total capital — the ratio c/v increases. This results from technological development reducing labor inputs over time.

But the rate of surplus-value s/v doesn’t depend on constant capital at all. So if the rate of surplus-value tends to decrease, it can’t be because of a change in the fraction of constant capital.

The rate of profit and the rate of surplus-value express different things.

The rate of profit is what motivates capitalists and the capitalist economy in general. A capitalist invests money M in order to receive M’ > M at a later point. In developed capitalist society, this occurs with such regularity and uniformity that there emerges a “market rate” for this money growth, a singular rate of profit known to anyone who wishes to invest their money.

The rate of surplus-value — a category identified only through the chapter one analysis of value — is synonymous with rate of exploitation. It is a simple ratio of unpaid-to-paid labor, performed either by an individual worker or by the working class as a whole. In principle, this rate could stay fixed at 100% forever, and the rate of profit would decrease independently as c/v increases.

End of Volume 1 chapter 17:

[Ricardo] has not, any more than have the other economists, investigated surplus-value as such, i.e., independently of its particular forms, such as profit, rent, &c. He therefore confounds together the laws of the rate of surplus-value and the laws of the rate of profit. The rate of profit is, as we have already said, the ratio of the surplus-value to the total capital advanced; the rate of surplus-value is the ratio of the surplus-value to the variable part of that capital. Assume that a capital C of £500 is made up of raw material, instruments of labour, &c. © to the amount of £400; and of wages (v) to the amount of £100; and further, that the surplus-value (s) = £100. Then we have rate of surplus-value s/v = £100/£100 = 100%. But the rate of profit s/c = £100/£500 = 20%. It is, besides, obvious that the rate of profit may depend on circumstances that in no way affect the rate of surplus-value. I shall show in Book III. that, with a given rate of surplus-value, we may have any number of rates of profit, and that various rates of surplus-value may, under given conditions, express themselves in a single rate of profit.

Profit includes constant capital. Surplus value is an analytic category used to get behind profit and understand its true nature.

Yes. Capital wants to produce pure profit, to generate it out of thin air without any machinery or land — setting to zero the MoP part of that first equation.

Marx analyzing John Stuart Mill:

With regard to this wonderful illustration, we note first of all that, as a result of a discovery, corn is supposed to be produced without seeds (raw materials) and without fixed capital; that is, without raw materials and without tools, by means of mere manual labour, out of air, water and earth. This absurd presupposition contains nothing but the assumption that a product can be produced without constant capital, that is, simply by means of newly applied labour. In this case, what he set out to prove has of course been proved, namely, that profit and surplus-value are identical, and consequently that the rate of profit depends solely on the ratio of surplus labour to necessary labour. The difficulty arose precisely from the fact that the rate of surplus-value and the rate of profit are two different things because there exists a ratio of surplus-value to the constant part of capital—and this ratio we call the rate of profit. Thus if we assume constant capital to be zero, we solve the difficulty arising from the existence of constant capital by abstracting from the existence of this constant capital. Or we solve the difficulty by assuming that it does not exist. Pro batum est.

“All economists share the error of examining surplus-value not as such, in its pure form, but in the particular forms of profit and rent. What theoretical errors must necessarily arise from this will be shown […] in the analysis of the greatly changed form which surplus-value assumes as profit.”

— Marx’s opening statement to “Volume 4” of Capital, Theories of Surplus Value

There is a difference between profit and surplus-value. It can be summed up pretty much as follows:

1. Surplus value is the general, abstract form of economic exploitation which enables a non-working ruling class. Profit is one concrete form taken by surplus-value.
2. Profit includes constant capital. Surplus value does not.

Thesis: Nuking your reddit account is good for your mental health

Antithesis: If everyone nuked their reddit accounts, a lot of invaluable information (especially in niche communities) would be lost, and this would primarily hurt average people and not reddit as a corporation

Synthesis: Nuking all reddit accounts is good for society’s health. Reddit is a trash website. In the short-term it will hurt, but long-term we are better off moving these communities to decentralized platforms. There are ways to archive the important information from reddit. Reddit thrives off the free contributions of countless users who are paid nothing, and reddit claims ownership and monetizes all content freely published to it. If you don’t like reddit, simply stop posting to it, no matter how juicy the bait

Salmon soup (lohikeitto) is common to find in most Finnish markets and restaurants. Usually exactly as you described, large vats of soup and bowls that are quickly served to each person.

Another perfect food on a cold Finnish winter day is rice pudding (riisipuuro). It has all the advantages of soup but it’s also sticky, so no concern of clumsily spilling soup while wearing thick gloves/mittens.

Ramen, pho, and other soup styles are also common streetfoods (not in Finland) for the benefits you mention

are they adding extra ethanol or something?

Yes. 88 has up to 15% ethanol. You should check your manual before using it.

I agree. I have a few more thoughts to add to this.

Workers in the imperial core have a responsibility to see past their immediate circumstances in order to understand that the exploitation of the global proletariat is fundamentally linked with their own exploitation. That although a worker in a rich country may be materially better off than a worker in a poor country, they have more in common, in terms of class position, with the global proletariat than with the bourgeoisie. A western worker who doesn’t identify with the global proletariat has an incorrect understanding of their own position.

Superexploitation is not only real, but absolutely integral to contemporary capitalism. Therefore anti-imperialism is an indispensable part of any anti-capitalist movement. A movement which aims only to improve working conditions in rich countries is basically a white socialism, a socialism aiming only for the economic liberation of a subset of privileged workers (the labor aristocracy).

However, it doesn’t follow that any organization whatsoever in rich countries is identical to a labor-aristocratic struggle.

If the global average wage is, say, $1 per hour, this says nothing about the material conditions of a worker receiving this average wage. In the US, this wage corresponds to far fewer goods than in Bangladesh. So it would be severely over-simplifying to simply compare a given worker’s salary to the global average and declare that any worker earning above the average is benefiting from imperialism, therefore labor-aristocratic. There must necessarily be an analysis of the material conditions of that worker where they live. As well, in the US for example, 7.5% of the population is unemployed or under-employed. This population may receive a wage many times larger than the global average, yet still be unable to afford food or housing or medical care. It would be wrong to say that these people share a class interest with the lanyards working in DC merely because they are American workers.

The infographic makes sense if it refers to median instead of mean. Changing wealth distribution does change median wealth.

The infographic cites the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2019^[1], I think specifically Table 2-4.

Page 130, section 4.2 states that the global wealth per adult (mean) is $70,850 for mid-2019. To recover the numbers from the bottom map in the infographic, look in Table 2-4 for the median wealth per adult.

As an example, the infographic has the Philippines becoming 26x wealthier. Table 2-4 shows mid-2019 median wealth of $2,618. Computing the numbers, (70850-2618)/(2618) gives 26. Indonesia, with a median wealth of $1,977, works out to 35x — same as the infographic.

I agree with the skepticism but it’s a little more complicated than that, I think. It could still benefit the bourgeoisie to keep the US labor force in a system of debt peonage. The workers are paid a wage that exceeds the value of labor power, but that money eventually returns in the form of interest. The main point of Hudson is that the West is highly financialized and receives value primarily through economic rent (value transfer) rather than surplus value (value creation through industry).

One of the reasons shit is so expensive in the US is precisely because of the artificially high price of land which allows landowners to extract rent from individuals and businesses. This shows up in high cost of goods and in very large mortgages.

👍 I will add to my reading list

I haven’t read that Cope book (unfortunate name lol) but seems kinda dubious to say that all western workers are labor aristocratic.

Is the logic that the average US daily wage is higher than the value of the goods produced during the working day, therefore workers are being overpaid for their labor power?

The problem I have is that in Marx, the value of labor-power is flexible, because politically determined. Its value is the value of the goods required for its reproduction, at a certain standard of living. And because it costs more to live in countries like the US, the value of labor power for US workers really is higher.

I would of course agree that it isn’t fair that this is the case, but the reason things are “cheap” in peripheral countries is in large part because of US fuckery which relatively weakens their currencies. This weakening of currencies doesn’t suddenly convert the entire US proletariat into labor aristocrats… IMO. It really feels nonsensical to look at it this way when so many US workers are in poverty.

Ok, use Android then. Millions of people don’t care about those things because they have different priorities for their phone which Apple accounts for when they decide which features to roll out.

It’s in beta 1. Some apps look kinda bad if you’re trying to pick a horrid color. Hopefully they do something to improve contrast before release.

Every new Android version adds features that have been on iOS forever. Both OSes have different priorities.

Android will often add new features but they are poorly integrated or thought out. iOS tends to add features with a much higher level of refinement the first time around.

“Hey, sorry to bother you, was just wondering if you were dead. Please call back at your earliest convenience.”

You should have GPS without any service at all. You might need data for the map to load, depends on the app. If you’re lucky and the app automatically cached it when you had signal, or you manually downloaded the offline map, then you could navigate home in airplane mode.

All of this is moot because I think I remember reading the rest of this story. The hiker wasn’t really lost, they simply went on a hike without telling anyone, and ignored calls during that time because they were trying to unplug.

First step is abolishing wage labor and private property. Transitional political forms take on some form of direct democracy, probably something similar to soviet councils.

Whataboutism is a meaningless brainworm which the user invokes in order to ignore their own cognitive dissonance and inconsistent standards. You cry “whataboutism” when @very_poggers_gay@hexbear.net was correct to point out your own double standard. “All of this sounds at odds with representative democracy” implies that you believe genuine democracy is something we currently stand to lose.

What you need to understand is that Marxists are not interested in imposing utopian futures on the world. “What do you have in its place?” is the wrong question. Better questions: What currently prevents genuine democracy? What are the material conditions which both produce and maintain it? Then you get to work on changing those material conditions and removing the real basis which produces the problems.

With modern technology I wonder how necessary representative style governments really are. Electronic voting already exists and works quite well, and is probably the most secure form of voting as long as it can be audited. Of course, at some point administration has to come down to individuals, but as long as those individuals are held accountable in some way then it seems that the actual democratic step (i.e. voting on policy) need not be mediated through representatives as is oft repeated to justify the status quo.

You might have been referring to this with republicanism, but there are different types of representation, too. Parliamentary democracies are not obligated to obey the wishes of their subjects, whereas soviet (council) democracies are a form of direct democracy, where representatives are merely delegates and are obligated to obey/communicate the wishes of their subjects. In my comment above I had in mind the parliamentary type, since that is the kind in which there is a buffer between citizens and political institutions which is used by the bourgeoisie to suppress changes which would undermine capital.