/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Quite a few comments on this video claim that Cockshott is misrepresenting Hegel's work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kjja-oNyfdI

Is Cockshott correct, is Hegel just doing intellectual sleight of hand?

The video itself seems to be part of a series responding to comments from his blog where he seems to claim that Dialectical Materialism was invented by social democrats to corrupt Marx's work.

https://paulcockshott.wordpress.com/2020/04/28/please-waste-no-time-on-hegel/

tl;dr-I want to argue that rather than the end of neoliberalism, we are witnessing the restructuring in which it will become stronger than before. This is operated by fictitious capital, which should not be seen as an unproductive excess to the real productive capitalist process, but a vital part of its ability to evolve, adapt, and overcome crisis.

First some background on productive and unproductive labor. Let's take the example of a petty commodity producer. Assume that an hour’s labor produces $1 of value. The producer must undertake 4 hours of labor to reproduce their labor-power. That is the value of their labor-power is $4. They actually work for 8 hours, thereby producing $4 of new value, and so producing a surplus value of $4, embodied within a surplus product. So far, this all falls into the realm of productive labor.

But, the producer also has to spend time sending this surplus product to market, to be sold, and thereby to realize the money equivalent of this surplus value. Let us say it takes 2 hours for the producer to take the commodity to market and sell it. That means that the peasant has a cost of $2 in marketing the commodity, time that is taken up not in production, but in the circulation of the capital. This is unproductive labor. In fact, the producer has $2 tied up during this time that is not taking part in production, yet this $2 adds nothing to the value of the commodity.

Now, let's imagine a merchant comes along and buys the $8 of output of the peasant producer, for $7(below its value), but is able to sell this output in just half an hour. The merchant is able to make a profit. They sell the commodity at its value of $8, having paid only $7 for it, and having expended just half an hour $0.50 in selling it. Their realized profit is then equal to $0.50. The profit of the merchant derives not from exploiting the producer, but from the fact that they own enough money to do this, and because they can reduce the selling costs of the producer. This is the basis of finance capital and commercial profits. Finance Capital does not produce additional surplus value, but does increase the mass of realized profit. Not only does it do that, because as above, it frees up the time of the producer to be engaged in production, and thereby creating additional surplus value, it does so, because for industrial capital, iPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

/leftypol/ Do you continue to participate in electoral politics in your home country by voting in elections or have you given up on doing that these days?

what can an introvert/loner do to help the socialist cause?
Before you ask I'm not an incel. pic unrelated.

Introducing the future of food: squareat. TASTE THE FUTURE!
https://squareat.com/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt-Gw0pqCeaXTLsJLR42yZg/videos

Just for $55 a day you can get your recommended 2500 daily calorie intake.

This is the Karl Marx appreciation thread, for revolutionizing the field of economics, that to this day causes bourgeois economists to seethe.

To one of the greatest materialist philosophers of all times.

Here is an introduction to the M.O.N.D. hypotheses which assumes that dark matter does not exist
https://aeon.co/essays/we-should-explore-alternatives-to-the-standard-model-of-cosmology.

The "MOND people" are motivated to drop dark matter because it does not have empirical evidence.
No detector has been able to find the dark matter particles even after decades of trying. That means there are no direct measurements and that makes many materialists a bit skeptical, as well as restless to move on to different theoretical models.

This is a riveting tale about gravity, the shape of galaxies and the speed of stars.

What do you think about dark matter ?

I know that this is entirely speculation, however this theory would explain a lot about the US response to COVID that makes no scene without this theory.
As we all know the response to COVID by the American bourgeoisie state was very poor, America has a very high rate of infection and death, the highest of any wealth country, and higher then many third world countries. Why this is, is what I will call the American nonresponse question.
One solution to the American nonresponse question is that not responding the COVID is very beneficial to the American state. As we know COVID 99.9% of the time is very mild to younger people, but often leads to death of older people. Older retired people are a burden on the state and society because they have to have their needs met, yet they (in most cases) are unable to do productive labor. Economically older people are consumers and not producers. Having an older population is a strain on a nation's economy. Understanding this, the American state has perhaps decided that it is in their best interests to let COVID kill their older population to free up resources and labor to boost their economy, labor and resources that would otherwise be used to take care of the old. I understand that this sounds far fetched, however doing this would be in the strategic interests of the American Empire, and the American Empire has historically placed their strategic interests above the ethical and moral systems of the American population.

Why is the far right more censored than the far left in the west? Are we really seen as that little of a threat? Or is this just BS?

What are your thoughts on this? Is this the cornerstone BS that people buy and believe into the propagandic myth of "freedom" under capitalism?

>Just stop being poor and start a business and become rich bro! Just work hard and save pennies

Are people successful at it because they actually have something worthwhile to sell, or they just have enough money to throw at it until it becomes successful?