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Thanks for the tip Fred. I read George Caffentzis, "Why Machines Cannot Create Value... https://libcom.org/library/george-caffentzis-letters-blood-fire What would swell the ranks Marxist revolutionaries? I'll tell you after we get George out of the way. GC's "defense of the claim that machines do not create value" is a failure. His letters repeatedly prove that all human labor can not be eliminated. However, that fact does even imply that machines don't create any value. What is this strange "value" that machine output does not have? Self replication of automation is beside the point except to prove that human labor can never be eliminated totally. OK, but how does the fact that human labor was and will be always be necessary bear on why "value" is set by human labor? Self replicating automation is impossible and productivity has various limits, therefore machines can't create value? What a leap of logic! When automation becomes self-replicating will it be able to create value? "The ratio between workers caloric input and labor output could never reach 100%." What about oil drillers? This false and irrelevant conclusion makes it clear that GC is taking sides and resorting to lawyer-like facts to win for his side. Damn the truth; just find data. Remember "How to Lie With Statistics?" Yes, machines don't give a "Magical something for nothing." Having dismissed magic as a threat to the singular source of value, GC has again tried to divert our attention from the question, "can machines create value?" It all makes sense after one sees what Marx had in mind when he said machines can not create value. It seems that Marx-value is neither use-value nor exchange-value but just the wages generated. Since workers are not being paid when machines produce things, no value comes from machine production. That does not mean that no income is generated or that the output is just imaginary. ######################### It's not a question of whether machines can do all work or whether AI will be smarter than people. The question is will smart machines be able to take over so much work from humans that we need to end wage dependence? If we believe as an article of faith that machines can't create "value" that does not mean that they can't replace workers. Marxists could insist giving "to each" a share of the non-value output produced by machines. That would swell the ranks Marxist revolutionaries. Our strange denial of the impact of machines have on the need for human work has rendered most Marxists harmless, and therefore tolerated in the academy as representatives of a monopoly radicalism. Capitalists also support wage dependence, maximum resource plunder, and the delusion that we are creators. All classes of parasites pretend they are THE creators. What we have been given and destroyed has no standing in the theories of of human pride. _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
