I’m always baffled at how these people do not understand or care about the means of production. Capitalists and rentiers are all about the means of production. It’s just common sense. But capitalist bootlickers like this guy are content to have productive capacity rest with the worst people imaginable. They just wanna tax it. And of course they can’t do that because the instruments of violence lie with those who control the means of production.
I feel like these are kind of people who have internalised MCM’.
Nothing wrong with it. It is my bad honestly because I tried to sound smart while I was wasted.
I meant to say that while money is a good proxy and heuristic for power in a capitalist economy seeing how wealth is often capital these days, focusing solely on money and taxation of profits distracts from the power of means of production. Like the power of oil corporations comes from their ability to extract and distribute fossil fuels etc. rather than however many trillions they rake in in revenue and subsidies. Letting oil companies do what they do and just tax a share of their profit seems like a terrible idea to me because such a crucial industry should not be in the control of pieces of shit like Koch brothers.
It’s just a liberal tendency of shortsightedness where they think what’s wrong with their society is that corporations are not being taxed enough and voting the right representative will rectify that. Ignoring that all politicians in both houses are on the payroll of the corporations they want to tax, and that there are institutions of coercion like the judiciary and police to stop people from trying to tax them. Capitalists can also do a “capital strike” when they don’t like being taxed or shit like that.
It’s how Marx describes capital accumulation takes place in capitalist economies. M-C-M’. M is money. C is commodities. M’ is money but in higher quantity than M. It is a way of saying that you start off with some money, you use it to buy commodities then sell those commodities for a profit, ending up with more money than before.
If you have any more questions please feel free to let me know.
To answer your question directly at its face value, the distinction between wealth and the means of production is blurry. The point I tried to raise is that corporations as they exist today act on an imperative of profit maximisation. To let them act on this imperative, only just to tax them a portion of the profits, is not a solution. In the linked comment, I refer to fossil fuel corporations as an example and I will reuse that example again because it is easy to relate to. Would you not agree that it would be better to excise our reliance on fossil fuels altogether at some point? Or at least reduce our reliance on them to a minimal sustainable quantity? Doing this in a scenario where we let capitalists do what they want, only if they let us tax a portion of their profits, does not make sense. In fact, it is contradictory. Which is the reason why capitalism with fair taxation does not exist yet, even though capitalism has existed for close to a millennium.
I’m always baffled at how these people do not understand or care about the means of production. Capitalists and rentiers are all about the means of production. It’s just common sense. But capitalist bootlickers like this guy are content to have productive capacity rest with the worst people imaginable. They just wanna tax it. And of course they can’t do that because the instruments of violence lie with those who control the means of production.
I feel like these are kind of people who have internalised MCM’.
M>C>M’ … the illusion…?
What do you mean?
What’s wrong with M C M’, isn’t that a surface level view of Capital, to the untrained eye?
Nothing wrong with it. It is my bad honestly because I tried to sound smart while I was wasted.
I meant to say that while money is a good proxy and heuristic for power in a capitalist economy seeing how wealth is often capital these days, focusing solely on money and taxation of profits distracts from the power of means of production. Like the power of oil corporations comes from their ability to extract and distribute fossil fuels etc. rather than however many trillions they rake in in revenue and subsidies. Letting oil companies do what they do and just tax a share of their profit seems like a terrible idea to me because such a crucial industry should not be in the control of pieces of shit like Koch brothers.
It’s just a liberal tendency of shortsightedness where they think what’s wrong with their society is that corporations are not being taxed enough and voting the right representative will rectify that. Ignoring that all politicians in both houses are on the payroll of the corporations they want to tax, and that there are institutions of coercion like the judiciary and police to stop people from trying to tax them. Capitalists can also do a “capital strike” when they don’t like being taxed or shit like that.
What is MCM? Searching for it yields fashion brands and some other unrelated junk
It’s how Marx describes capital accumulation takes place in capitalist economies. M-C-M’. M is money. C is commodities. M’ is money but in higher quantity than M. It is a way of saying that you start off with some money, you use it to buy commodities then sell those commodities for a profit, ending up with more money than before.
Got it, thank you
Can you explain to me what the difference is controlling wealth and owning the means of production is, please?
I explained my point a bit more here: https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/4207941
If you have any more questions please feel free to let me know.
To answer your question directly at its face value, the distinction between wealth and the means of production is blurry. The point I tried to raise is that corporations as they exist today act on an imperative of profit maximisation. To let them act on this imperative, only just to tax them a portion of the profits, is not a solution. In the linked comment, I refer to fossil fuel corporations as an example and I will reuse that example again because it is easy to relate to. Would you not agree that it would be better to excise our reliance on fossil fuels altogether at some point? Or at least reduce our reliance on them to a minimal sustainable quantity? Doing this in a scenario where we let capitalists do what they want, only if they let us tax a portion of their profits, does not make sense. In fact, it is contradictory. Which is the reason why capitalism with fair taxation does not exist yet, even though capitalism has existed for close to a millennium.
Thank you for this. Makes perfect sense. I think that the thing is people like OP might not realise that one is good, the other is so much better.