r/badphilosophy • u/darthbarracuda STEMlooooord • Apr 13 '21
Xtreme Philosophy Marx was wrong because some apes can cook apple pies better than others
Mr. Dubois had said, 'Of course, the Marxian definition of value is ridiculous. All the work one cares to add will not turn a mud pie into an apple tart; it remains a mud pie, value zero. By corollary, unskillful work can easily subtract value; an untalented cook can turn wholesome dough and fresh green apples, valuable already, into an inedible mess, value zero. Conversely, a great chef can fashion of those same materials a confection of greater value than a commonplace apple tart, with no more effort than an ordinary cook uses to prepare an ordinary sweet.
These kitchen illustrations demolish the Marxian theory of value - the fallacy from which the entire magnificent fraud of communism derives - and illustrate the truth of the common-sense definition as measured in terms of use.'
Dubois had waved his stump as us. 'Nevertheless - wake up, back there! - nevertheless the disheveled old mystic of Das Kapital, turgid, tortured, confused, and neurotic, unscientific, illogical, this pompous fraud Karl Marx, nevertheless had a glimmering of a very important truth.
[...]
Value has no meaning other than in relation to living beings. The value of a thing is always relative to a particular person, is completely personal and different in quantity for each living human - market value is a fiction, merely a rough guess at the average of personal values, all of which must be quantitatively different or trade would be impossible.
[...]
Value has two factors for a human being: first, what he can do with a thing, its use to him...and second, what he must do to get it, its cost to him. There is an old song which asserts that the best things in life are free. Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted...and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears.'
If you can get over the badphilosophy in Starship Troopers, it's a fun read.
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Apr 13 '21
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u/BlockComposition I’m not qualifified to provide “answers” to anyone Apr 13 '21
Eat your heart out Asimov.
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u/lentil_loafer Apr 13 '21
It reminds me of an economic professor my brother had in college who said, when people take public scooters and bikes and ride them, then leave them around the city without putting them back, that is why socialism will always fail. And also, unions are bad for business.... like no, shit guy.
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u/boardatwork1111 Apr 13 '21
Out of all the critiques of Marxian economics, they pick.... that? I’d seriously question that professors credentials lol
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u/lentil_loafer Apr 13 '21
I’m in the Texas heartland if that helps. I had a creationist biologist professor, icing on top of my state education. He would always preface what the text book said with, “well they can’t really prove carbon dating” or whatever. It was a trip.
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u/boardatwork1111 Apr 13 '21 edited Apr 13 '21
As a fellow Texan (DFW) I completely feel your pain. Reminds me of last July when I went to get a covid test and the RN on staff told me how the whole pandemic was a hoax by China, Bill Gates, and Biden to turn the US into a puppet state or something. I’ve never lived in a place with so many (seemingly) educated/intelligent people holding willfully ignorant beliefs.
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u/burner5291 Apr 13 '21
Well there's something to be said about social programs doing better in countries with higher social trust, but ya your prof sounds like an absolute ass
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u/lentil_loafer Apr 13 '21
I can see that. I don’t see programs like that working when the rest of our economic structure is totally against public ownership
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Apr 13 '21
It's a good thing Marx never immediatly characterized commodities as use-values in the first page of Capital, it would have been certainly embarassing for this Dubois fella
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u/Cyclamate Apr 13 '21
The ol' use use-value / exchange-value switcharooni. You see it all the time
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u/Bullywug Apr 13 '21
Value has two factors for a human being: first, what he can do with a thing, its use to him...and second, what he must do to get it, its cost to him.
So like, if I want something that has value because someone worked hard to make it, I have to do some amount of work so that I can get it. Brilliant analysis!
All the work one cares to add will not turn a mud pie into an apple tart; it remains a mud pie, value zero.
So we can't just do work, the work has to be labor that's necessary for society.
Man, this guy is just owning Marx so fucking hard.
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Apr 13 '21
Mud pies could have other uses as well with the help of technology. My friend is working on a way to use mud as cheap material to make bricks for housing in Africa.
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u/Equality_Executor Apr 13 '21
I like your answer better but the first thing that came to my mind was that by talking about how useless mud pies were, Mr. Dubois actually increased their value as the need to have something to throw at him also increased.
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u/El_Draque PHILLORD Apr 13 '21
Let's not ignore the fact that children are naturally drawn to mud pies, as exhibited by their mud pie making behaviors.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the mud pie market is under-commodified!
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u/Hennes4800 Apr 13 '21
Dude humans, in Africa or anywhere else in the world, already use mud bricks for construction for a couple thousand years now.
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Apr 13 '21
I forget the specifics but he said it was a combo of mud and other biodegradable waste products. Dunno whatever happened with it tho. It's been 7 years since I talked to him.
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u/an_ickle_egg Apr 13 '21 edited Apr 19 '21
As uh, someone who grew up in South Africa... Dude's only a few thousand years late to the party.
They originally used a mixture of sticks and grasses woven together, these days there are a lot of projects that use plastic bottles (filled and unfilled depending), plastic waste, or other general waste materials. All of it with mud in between or surrounding it.
In hotter climates with less rain it works well, for areas with more rain, other materials are used to provide waterproofing, or clay is mixed in.
Oh, and they used a lot of cow dung too, has a lot of the fibrous grassy material all throughout it, and a lot of other densely packed waste that doesn't smell too bad when dried.
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Apr 13 '21
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u/DankeyKang11 Apr 14 '21
Hey there,
I am watching a hokey National Geographic documentary on Atlantis and, in looking for an actual scientific conversation, I found your comment https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/11jpap/what_is_the_officialacademic_consensus_on/c6n8fz5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3
I don’t understand the Tibet analogy.
I hope you still do, that comment being 8 years old and all...
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u/Tiako THE ULTIMATE PHILOSOPHER LOL!!!!! Apr 14 '21
Oops, accidentally deleted: basically, you know how Dr Strange went to Tibet to learn magic? If it was a Greek story, he would have gone to Egypt (or Babylon).
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u/CircleDog Apr 13 '21
The details have gone hazy with time but the bit that got me was his arguments for why their society was perfect and had solved crime and it was basically because of the death penalty. Which is objectively funny. Unfortunately I think there are quite a few people who read this book and were quite convinced.
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u/Cyclamate Apr 13 '21
capitalists claim value is subjective only when arguing with marxists. The rest of the time they're on Morningstar trying to figure out the objective value of everything
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u/GodEatsPoop Apr 13 '21
- Get rid of the borgouise
- Set up a comittee to decide who needs what
- The commitee invariably ends up becoming an oligarchy
- Marxist worker's paradise
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u/lentil_loafer Apr 13 '21
Yas Lenin, go off King Yaaassss
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u/samurai_45 Apr 13 '21
king
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u/lentil_loafer Apr 13 '21
Monarcho-Communism, ever heard of it??
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u/astatine757 Apr 18 '21
Monarcho-Communists are just cryptofacists. Anarcho-Monarchism is a much more coherent ideology
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u/CircleDog Apr 13 '21
- Discover capitalism
- Take over the entire world and steal their stuff.
- Fight amongst yourselves over that stuff until nuking each other to oblivion
- Libertarian paradise from mad max
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u/khandnalie Apr 13 '21
Marxism is when you make mud pies, and the more mud pies you make, the Marxister it is.