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South Korean companies are offering workers $75,000 to have babies amid the country's desperate bid for more children (www.businessinsider.com)
submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/world
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[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I was like "(companies) paying parents to have children" belongs to a caricature of capitalism, but here we are. (My bad, it's companies paying parents to have children, and not some bigger entity, like the government. I already edited the previous sentence for clarity.)

If you don't mind me asking though, what "marxist theory in action" do you see in this article?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

In this case that the cost of replacement of labor power factors in to the wage a company has to pay in order to maintain production.

The manufacturer who calculates his cost of production and, in accordance with it, the price of the product, takes into account the wear and tear of the instruments of labour. If a machine costs him, for example, 1,000 shillings, and this machine is used up in 10 years, he adds 100 shillings annually to the price of the commodities, in order to be able after 10 years to replace the worn-out machine with a new one. In the same manner, the cost of production of simple labour-power must include the cost of propagation, by means of which the race of workers is enabled to multiply itself, and to replace worn-out workers with new ones. The wear and tear of the worker, therefore, is calculated in the same manner as the wear and tear of the machine.

https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Wage_labour_and_capital

edit: replaced quote with an imo more fitting quote from the same book.

[–] PrinceWith999Enemies 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

One of the most frustrating things about academic Marxism is that it hypothesizes that “capitalists” (whom they bung together with remarkable aplomb) do things like figure in the reproduction cost of labor. They don’t. They’re focused on the next quarter and maybe the next year. Maybe even the next five years. But no one ranging from Elon Musk to (not sure who his opposite would be so I’m kinda taking a stab here) Warren Buffett is thinking in terms of generational replacement. First, they’re not going to live that long. Neither are their shareholders. Plus capital is mobile - it’ll just go someplace else.

This is a headline precisely because it’s a man bites dog story. If your company gives you paid parental leave it’s either because it’s legally required or for retention. It’s not in the hope that the little toy will become a software engineer at the company in 25 years.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

One of the most frustrating things about academic Marxism is that it hypothesizes that “capitalists” do things like figure in the reproduction cost of labor.

It doesn't? It never postulates that capitalists actively control the economy or do more than the bare minimum, on the contrary that they are bound to the laws of the market is one of the main points of marxism. That the cost of replacement factors into the cost of labor power is like the cost of replacement factoring in for any other commodity on the market. I highly suggest you read the booklet I linked, it's very short.

[–] PrinceWith999Enemies 1 points 9 months ago

I’m actually pretty well read on the subject, both from the 18th to 19th century literature and from modern Marxist and other socialist economists. I’m also a biologist who has a bit of a specialization in pro-social models of behavior from a mathematical perspective and who derives data from real world observations and experiments.

The idea that capital controls the labor market is fairly central to the Marxist approach to capitalism. Both Marx and Adam Smith attributed dynamics to conscious actions that today we, as sophisticated systems theorists, would come up with better models to explain. They had an attitude towards human action that in some ways were the forerunner to modern sciences of collective behavior, but they’re still ridiculously primitive compared to modern theory.

Again, I am not the only academic to make this point. You find it is ubiquitous in modern Marxist literature. There are still some traditionalists, of course. I’m sure you know a particular white bearded professor who has what I honestly believe is the best introduction/course on Capital ever created. I honestly really like his work.

But what I don’t like is when communists or socialists refer to themselves as “Marxists.” I particularly don’t like it when they shoot down an idea using something that was written by someone in the 19th century, as if we haven’t had multiple revolutions in understanding economics and the science of complex systems since then.

What I’m saying is that you can read Marxist forums on line, and you can read Marxist academics publishing papers in Marxist journals, who argue that so-and-so is wrong because Marx(or whomever) said X. Nobody, and I mean nobody, quotes Darwin to refute a point in biology. Darwin was a genius, but he was a product of his time and got some very basic and very important stuff completely wrong. Ask a biologist about it and they’ll tell you it’s completely wrong and we figured it out a hundred years ago. They won’t canonize Darwin, even if they really really want a Darwin bobblehead for their desk.

Again, and I cannot make this more plain and I am not the only academic to say this: it’s called evolutionary biology, not Darwinism. I have friends and colleagues at places like the econ department at the New School, and they refer to what they do as “economics.” That’s where I’d prefer things to go.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Thanks for the explanation.

It reminds me of the concept of depreciation in accounting, in which you're accounting for the "loss of value" of a piece of machinery as time goes on. I guess it fits how the capitalists view people (labor) as yet another kind of machine. I dunno how it fits with what you're trying to explain here, but it somehow clicks for me. So that the factory owner can keep buying machinery, they must allocate some of their funds not just for the upkeep of the equipment, but also save up for the cost of buying a new one.

Admittedly, I'm not very well-versed with neither accounting nor the theories put on display here, but we learn something new every day, right?

(PS:‌ I'm still working through the pamphlet you've linked. I might have gotten a lot of things wrong, and in that case, I apologize.)