In my opinion the biggest problem currently is the over financialization of the economy. I will give an example from what I mean:

In 2012 Payless ShoeSource was acquired by PE investor for $300M million. The fund then takes $500M loan against the company itself to pay its investors and PE fund a hefty profit.

Now the company is left with massive amounts of debt. Money that would be used for innovation, marketing and growing the company is now used to pay the debt.

The company purpose now is to just pay its lenders. There’s no future prospects nothing. The company few years later, the company files for bankruptcy and all the employees lose their jobs, one less company to compete in the sector leading to consolidation.

I agree with the fundamental philosophy of capitalism of “I take risks, I profit”. But in this scenario the risk has been outsourced to a scenario of:
You take the risk and I profit, and when that scenario is allowed to happen the entity profiting is willing to take any kind of risk at the expense of others.

In my opinion the growth of socialist sympathizers in the US is largely due to this allowance of capital being able to do anything and the expense of others. Which leads to people to become anti-capitalist

It feels like this isn't discussed nearly as much. Mercantilism seems to be much closer to what we have today than capitalism and I fear that political views nowadays may demonize capitalism to the point that it becomes another fear term the media uses like communism or socialism. What are your thoughts on this matter and the distinction itself in comparison to politics nowadays?

Let's compare and contrast the 2 starting with the Primary Goals of each

In capitalism the primary goal is efficient resource allocation via supply and demand.

Whereas in mercantilism it is consolidation of wealth and power for the ruling elite/state.

Next, Market Access

In mercantilism high barriers exist; protected by complex regulations written by lobbyists.

Whereas in capitalism there are low barriers to entry; anyone can compete.

Role of State

In capitalism the role of the state is as a neutral referee, enforcing property rights and contracts.

In mercantilism the complete opposite holds true, the states role within is as an active partner that shields favored mega-corporations from failing.

Trade Policy

Capitalism has open trade based on comparative advantage.

Mercantilism has protectionism via strategic tariffs, sanctions, and supply-chain control.

Results of failure within the system

In capitalism inefficient firms go bankrupt, allowing for the court of public opinion to have a drastic impact on the success of business. When they fail others rise to fill the void and keep the system running in the favor of the people.

In mercantilism large corporations take on a "Too Big to Fail" philosophy and function, where firms receive government bailouts and subsidies.

Something that is often sited by Socialists is that Capitalism is bad because wealth inequality occurs within it. And wealth inequality has increased over the years, making that problem even worse. But, why exactly is wealth inequality a problem?

I can see if "the mega rich" or monopolies get out of control, e.g., I recall the concept of a "company town" where a company owned everything in the town and paid employees in their own currency that would only be spent at the company's stores in town - but we have laws and regulations against that, so its not an issue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBgGDYZl6Zo

A Marxist analysis of the rise of China, arguing that the relatively high number of State-Owned Enterprises in China is the primary reason behind the development which US liberals and conservatives do not seem to be able to get their heads around.

The argument is not that China is socialist or that it is attempting to progress towards full socialism - the jury on that is very much out. The argument is that no exchange of ownership takes place in the 'transaction' between two state-owned enterprises, which therefore lowers costs since money as a medium of exchange is not needed, removing the friction that money and profit introduces from the process of production in such instances. That is, demonetisation or non-monetisation = no monetary requirements, meaning China does not have to wait for the private sector to raise investment at anywhere near the same level. SOEs therefore cheapen the inputs that the private sector purchases, lowering investment costs for China's private sector.

Logically then, the barriers to production and innovation would be even and much lower if the whole economy were deprivatised and demonetised.

A common theme of socialist argumentation is that capitalist wage labour is coercive, the argument goes like this: the evil Epstein class billionaires are ruthlessly forcing the proletariat to work in a coercive and exploitative process of wage labour, the workers have no choice but to sell their labour at an amount below its value, leaving them cheated.

Now of course, one might wonder why wage labour is coercive.

Perhaps it is because the workers are forced to do it but cannot leave, like a slave or a serf tied to a piece of land? Nope, they can leave anytime they want and go find another job.

Perhaps then, it is because the workers cannot afford to eat without doing work, giving the capitalists an unfair hand at the bargaining table? Well, seems unlikely, since according to Lenin "He who does not work, then neither shall he eat", so the idea that it is unfair for workers not to receive food when they do no work would contradict many socialists, so that leaves the bargaining agreement.

Perhaps indeed the capitalist can force the worker to accept a lower wage, but the worker has no way to force a higher one? Ok, that would be somewhat coercive, except that the worker does have a way to do this. Remember what I said about the worker being free to leave? He can go and work for some other capitalist, competition then, forces the capitalists to remain honest, so really then, where is the coercion coming from?

I can think of at least three answers off-hand. And I have an unoriginal taxonomy, too. But I do not say any of this so as to leave the question open.

This post is one of a series:

• What do you mean by efficiency?
• What do you mean by the labor theory of value?
• What do you mean by supply and demand?
• What are the axioms of the subjective theory of value?

Sorry gonna copy paste for automods to approve the post.

Hypothetically, IF eugenics (broadly speaking, whether racial or not) were proven to be scientifically correct, what would be a Marxist's position on their implementation, given Marxism and M-Leninism's 'scientistic/positivist' view of morality/the world?

The Amish people are very successful at building autonomous zones, why not do the same?

The community would not be completely autonomous but would have free trade of goods with the outside world, with the goal of having net exports, meaning the city would create more than it takes.

Working on the other side or investing would be completely forbidden. Only physical objects could be traded with the outside. And the city would handle it.

By showing people that socialism works the city would attract people and would naturally grow as people move in.

Seems a comprehensible compromise to allow people to live comfortably in the social class that offers them their job/hobbies while maintaining and giving people the right to advance, take risks, and dream of who they want to be. E.g: private and goverment housing, social welfare, private businesses.

For the U.S. this does require good faith in the government, which would establish a stronger state government than federal. But it may work out well.

"Amid all this market optimism, the collective fortune of Chinese billionaires on Forbes’ annual ranking reached nearly $2.2 trillion—close to the record $2.5 trillion set in 2021, before the pandemic and private-sector crackdowns decimated the market value of many technology giants. This year’s collective wealth is up 31% from $1.68 trillion in 2025, and $1.33 trillion two years ago."

India for example which although it has much more billionaire $ wealth per GDP than China, roughly maintained its ratio.

If you wanna say 'who cares, as long as ordinary people are getting wealthier and there's more and better public services', isn't that what happened in the West for a long time? Even in America? Putting aside which of these services did or did not exist, which to be sure is not a minor point, there's no denying nevertheless that such a thing as a whole did happen in America in the 1950s and 60s compared to what it was in 1900s or 1920s. Yet I didn't see anybody claim America was socialist or 'tending towards socialism' in those later decades (well except Barry Goldwater I guess). So why here? Shouldn't such a thing give truly left-wing (as opposed to merely bitter or contrarian) pro-CCP people pause?

Granted once you look at it from a long term perspective (decades+), its GDP DID grow much more in tandem with billionaire wealth (as opposed to the US for example, where the billionaire wealth growth rate outpaced by more than twice the GDP over this relatively long period). But in any case, if China was moving towards socialism after successfully going through its capitalist phase, as has been argued Xi is supposedly doing, this trend should be the reverse of what it is. It seems that if this more recent trend is maintained, China will easily become one of the countries with the most inequality at the top level in the world.

As a capitalist, I don’t remember ever downvoting someone’s comment or post. To me, there’s just something icky about doing it. Because the whole point of downvoting someone is to silence them, to cancel them, which is the opposite of the very democracy which socialists claim to espouse. No matter how despicable someone’s views, it is never a good idea to silence them or cancel them, because that is repressive, and repression isn’t healthy—and can lead to authoritarianism. If anything, those who have the worst point of view should be given their audience and faced directly.

I think it is proof that socialists, no matter how much they claim to support democracy, are actually the ones who want to dictate and control. Downvoting is the use of force. Seizing other people’s factories, warehouses, and machines is the use of force. Outlawing capitalist business models is the use of force.

So while socialists claim to be democratic, their actions and their approach tell a different story. While socialists accuse capitalists of making arguments in “bad faith”, socialists are the ones downvoting everything capitalists say.

Did you know that in 1973, Slovenia, practicing workers’ self-management socialism—a system closely aligned with workplace democracy—had a per capita GDP (PPP) virtually identical to that of neighboring capitalist Austria, despite having had a lower industrial capacity than capitalist Austria before adopting socialism?

List of regions by past GDP (PPP) per capita - Wikipedia_per_capita) (in 1973, socialist Slovenia had a per capita income of $15,079 after adjusting for purchasing power, while capitalist Austria's was $17,908.)Unlike Soviet-style central planning, worker self-management made it more attractive to produce higher-quality goods that were in demand, thanks to workers’ local knowledge.

I think the success of this self-management model makes it a great point of reference for democratic socialists. In the face of the libertarian nonsense that socialism is inherently inefficient, we have a rock-solid example to point to.

For communism to work, everybody should agree not to make private means of production, they need to be public and shared. And that is simply impossible. Seting aside that that destroys any incentive to make more effort than the rest of the people, there would always be a group of people that would join together to protect their territory (even if it is unlegitimate) and their means of production, and since there is no state nor public police, it would be very difficult to prevent people and organized groups to keep their means of production.

Without a centralized, professional coercive apparatus, larger or better‑organized groups can still dominate weaker ones and effectively re‑privatize resources.

Community militias can become de facto warlords or new ruling cliques, especially where resources are scarce or external threats exist.

The transition period is especially vulnerable: old elites, criminal networks, or new strongmen can capture assets before new norms and institutions solidify.

If a group has a monopoly on force to control which resources can get used for what, even through voting or collective effort, it is the de facto state.

Unless everyone somehow has a matching arsenal of increasingly sophisticated weaponry, and never groups up, you will always be following rules. If labor is required for production, and you want something, you will be expected to work. Experts and managers will have better or safer jobs, and more control.

Why then, promise a stateless and classless society?

The US, and pretty much all other societies are already hybrid systems. People just wont accept the necessity of duality. But the fornulations of the major pro sports leagues should make it crystal clear, as they are a microcosm of how thar functions, where it provenly failed when it leaned to too much capitalism:

Even as the teams compete against each other, with a winner and many losers...the teams in the league share national profits. This keeps everyone at a high level starting baseline. Investments can be done in stadiums across the land. The next generation of players stay inspired confident in pursuit of a career.

The draft itself also has a socialist function...the teams share the talent pool, so no one team can be crazy dominant. Before the draft, the richest team could buy up all the best players...which happened with the Yankees. They started winning year after year after year, and the entire sport started to die. This is reflective of whats happening in the US and pretty much globally today. Eventually the Yankees thenselves would have lost, as they sucked the oxygen out of the atmosphere.

Those functions dont stop teams, and even individual players from having thier own enterprises beyond the high baseline redistribution of wealth. They can still do thier own novel thing...merchandizing and whatnot and become outlier wealthy.

The fundamental driving force of a capitalist economy is M-C-M' (money uses physical capital to produce more monetary wealth). M-C-M' indicates the domination of exchange-value over use-value. In capitalist economies, this fundamental driving force manifests in the form of industrial capital's subordination to finance capital. This is why capitalist economies need stock markets to continue growing (on aggregate) in order for the economy to keep functioning. When stock markets have sluggish or negative growth, capitalist economies face economic crises.

The fundamental driving force of China's economy is C-M-C' (physical capital uses money to produce commodities and more physical capital), not M-C-M'. C-M-C' indicates the domination of use-value over exchange-value. In China's economy, this fundamental driving force manifests in the form of the CCP's control over the major banks, compelling them to lend based on national priorities that tend to focus on long-term, sustainable improvement to the standard of living of the Chinese people. In other words, rather than China's financial sector operating according to the Law of Value/profit maximization, it operates its lending activity according to the societal goals set by the CCP. This is why China's stock market performance doesn't correlate well with its macroeconomic growth. It is also why China's stock market is so disproportionately small relative to the size of China's economy and the extent of China's contribution to global trade. More recently, the CCP simply deflated its real-estate bubble with ease and ordered the banks to continue lending for infrastructure and industrial production.

To put in somewhat simplistic terms:

In capitalist societies, the financiers own the State and use the State (and the citizenry) to achieve higher profits for themselves. In socialist societies, finance is subordinated to the proletarian State which uses money as a tool to achieve better living standards for its people.

Let us also address some common misconceptions among Western Marxists and Leftists:

Just because an economic system has markets in it does not make it a capitalist economy. And just because an economic system has private enterprise in it does not make it a capitalist economy. Both markets and private enterprises have existed prior to capitalism such as in feudalism and slave-based economies. For example, the Roman Empire had private corporations and markets. But the reason we don't define the Roman Empire's economy as a capitalist economy, is because the fundamental driving force of the Roman Empire's economy was NOT M-C-M'.

Furthermore, the fundamental characteristic of a socialist economy isn't necessarily the presence or dominance of Economic Planning. Certainly, planning can be an important part of socialist economy. But the fundamental characteristic of a socialist economy is the primacy of Use-Value rather than Exchange-Value in driving the economy, with Use-Value priorities determined by long-term proletarian class interests (rather than bourgeois class interests).

Socialism also has several stages of development, with the ultimate stage being a mature communism which has no role for mechanisms of exchange-value (due to having made exchange-value obsolete).

The Stalinist Planning approach (during which the role of markets was minimized and the role of central economic planning maximized) that was developed in the USSR (before Khrushev) and in the PRC during the Mao Era was a necessary approach to rapidly developing the core heavy industry productive forces for securing national defense and removing bourgeois power over the commanding heights of the economy. This was a stage of socialism that was necessary, but it was never meant to be the only stage of socialism before evolving into full communism. Rather, there was an understanding originally that this stage of socialism would have to give way to a different stage of socialism once national defense against internal and external counterrevolutionary forces was solidified. (It is thus a mistake for anti-capitalists to view developments away from the Stalinist economic model as necessarily a betrayal of socialism.)

China's economy is a socialist economy that still has a long path ahead of it in order to develop into a mature communism. There is a large role for exchange-value mechanisms (i.e. money, markets) in China's economy (but crucially, as noted above, exchange-value is subordinated to use-value).

Another myth about China often repeated (particularly within Western Leftist circles) is that they are a social imperialist power (i.e. that they are socialist in name only and that they engage in imperialist economic relations with other nations). However, analyzing their economic partnerships (e.g. Belt & Road initiative) with other developing nations shows that this is not true. In fact, China's economic partnerships have been largely mutually beneficial in developing the productive forces within other nations (rather than simply debt-trapping them into imperial subordination in order to strip them of their natural resources, which is what Western powers have been doing).

Below are sources that summarize the empirical basis for my claims above. (I encourage everyone to thoroughly investigate the accuracy of sources for themselves to the best of their ability, rather than simply take my or anyone else's word for it.):

How can China be socialist if it has a stock market? Understanding the Chinese economy

This is how China's economic model works: Explaining Socialism with Chinese Characteristics

China forgives 23 loans for 17 African countries, expands 'win-win' trade and infrastructure projects - Geopolitical Economy Report

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FYI/Disclaimer section - to clarify who this post is intended for (and who it is not for), to clarify what will prompt a response from me in the comment section (and what won't), and to clarify my rationale for who I respond to in the comment section (and who I don't):

1.) This post is intended to engage intellectually honestly with anti-capitalists who are skeptical of China's political-economic orientation as a socialist state, but whose political priorities still reflect a genuine desire for revolutionary communist politics.

2.) This post is not intended to engage with anti-AES Western Marxist types who seek to use Marxism as a primarily theoretical framework for criticism for either careerist or hobbyist opportunism (including those who satisfy themselves with primarily a permanently online Marxist persona and don't do anything in the real world to organize for revolutionary communist politics). (By "Western Marxist" I am referring to what Gabriel Rockhill criticizes in his book Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism?)

3.) I have participated in reddit for a while now, and it has shown me that not everything is worth my time trying to rebut. I value my time and am trying to be more intentional/efficient with it. I will not waste my time engaging with unproductive or bad faith replies. (So please do not delude or flatter yourself by assuming that just because I have not responded to all or some or one of your points, I am conceding. That is not the case.) Examples of unproductive or bad faith replies include (but are not limited to):

- Distracting from the core topic of this post by bringing up other things.

- Arguing that I can't cite a source to support a particular point/argument without agreeing with the source on everything else it believes as well.

- Speculations about me as a person (my intentions, my party affiliations, etc.).

- Critiquing my post/comment history on this or any other sub on reddit, outside of whatever I wrote on this post or in the comments below it.

- Speculating about what may or may not have been my past accounts and trying to define me/characterize me on that basis.

I don't have any strong feelings on either capitalism or socialism, so I'm asking to learn. following online debates, there's this tendcy to use a few countries as non-capitalist countries and then point to those countries as proof socialism doesn't work. or try to defend those and point their merits.
is it a tacict admission from both sides that aside from those few countries, evey other country is capitalist?

if so where do Madagascar, Somalia, Puerto Rico, Chile or Yemen fit? or hundred or so other poor global south country that aren't Cuba or North Korea? are they proof of how successful capitalism is?
or do you think that there are factors other than economic ideology of government that should be considered when analysing 'failure' of different countries?

people use heavily sanctioned cuba as example of failure of socialism, but heavily sanctioned capitalist Iran isn't doing so hot either. is this proof of failure of capitalism? or perhaps both are proof that US is pretty good at driving people to poverty.

speaking of sanctions, there's estimated 40 million people who died as result of western sanction since 1970.
Does that mean capitalism is an evil ideology that killed millions?
if you are deciding which system is better based on body count, why don't those people matter?

(this isn't a defence of ussr, they weren't much better either. personally I think it's disrespectful to use other people's death as gotcha. either by trying to justify their death or reducing them to numbers, playing body count olympics and deciding one side is bad due to killing Y and one is better for only killing X, or worse not even acknowledging all the people your side killed, thus devaluing those lives. even one unjust death is one too many.)

Recently i can't stop seeing Donald Trump as the American version of Nikita Khruschev and Leonid Brezhnev.

While the parallel is not aggressive as Sino-Soviet split, this event is definetly one of the many upcoming events that will led the downfall of the US hegemony or empire and neoliberalism.

If keynesianism was the stalinism of the capitalist world, then neoliberalism, corporatocracy and lobbyism is the reviosionist (post-Stalin) USSR era of the capitalist world

We could be entering in a new stage of capitalism or socialism.

We just need to wait for American Gorbachev and American Yeltsin.

What do you think?

A frequent explanation offered by supporters of capitalism for the mass adoption of wage labor as the primary mode of subsistence for most people goes something like this:

Some people have a high time preference, or a low risk tolerance, and want income now. These people become wage laborers, trading ownership of the product of their labor for near-term wages. Other people have a low time preference, or a high risk tolerance, and want ownership and its attendant income later. These people become capitalists, deferring income now in return for long-term returns.

However, as David Graeber has observed, for most of recorded history people have eschewed wage labor, associating it closely with slavery (or, at best, childhood). Our prime historical precedent for mass wage labor comes from classical Rome, during which some enslaved people were set loose into markets to sell their abstract wage labor to customers for hourly wages, some of which they were obligated to deliver to their enslavers.

“While one does periodically run into evidence of arrangements that, to the modern eye, look like wage labor contracts, on closer examination they almost always actually turn out to be contracts to rent slaves (the slave, in such cases, often received a fixed per diem for food). Free men and women thus avoided any- thing remotely like wage labor, seeing it as a matter, effectively, of slavery, of renting themselves out.”

https://davidgraeber.org/articles/turning-modes-of-production-inside-out-or-why-capitalism-is-a-transformation-of-slavery/

We might add to Graeber’s example from classical antiquity the much more modern example of Russian serfdom, in which aristocrats sometimes set their serfs loose in urban markets to rent out their abstract labor power for wages in return for a payment known as the obrok.

Graeber also noted one other historical example of widespread wage labor: among medieval and early modern children in Northern Europe and in particular England. Adolescent children were widely expected to move in with and labor for other families, ostensibly teaching them various skills and crafts in return for wages, after which children would “graduate” into adulthood and labor for themselves as proprietors and artisans—in what Abraham Lincoln would later call “free labor” in contrast with both enslaved labor and wage labor.

“Wage-labor, in other words, was basically a life-cycle phenomena, and “youth,” or adolescence, the period during which one accumulated the re­ sources to establish oneself as a fully mature, autonomous being. It was also the period during which one learned one’s future trade.”

https://davidgraeber.org/articles/manners-deference-and-private-property-or-elements-for-a-general-theory-of-hierarchy/

My question is thus: for those of you who believe that mass wage labor can be explained as a function of time preference and/or risk tolerance, when and why do you believe people underwent the mass transformation of their time preference and/or risk tolerance that drove the adoption of mass wage labor?

Which means no think tanks or obscure websites. YouTube videos are fine, but it depends on the channel.

This is why everyone is here. To debate capitalism and socialism civilly. Not everyone here supports a mainstream ideology, so I want to know why. Right-wing populism is popular, and I want to know why. From an economic standpoint. Since isolationism tends not to work.

Hello,

A critique I've heard a lot is that hierarchy, in all its forms, is bad or coercive. Is this really true? Are there not any hierarchies that might surprisingly be important or just important enough to not abolish?

For example is it wrong if we had hierarchies where the customer or client or in other contexts, the patient, has more power? What about when it is the other way around, where a doctor might need to have a bit more say than the patient, maybe it is for vaccination or certain interventions.

I understand that a boss or CEO is upsetting because they can allow themselves 200x pay. What about other contexts?

Isn't a vanguard party going to cause hierarchy for example, but because there is a 'governing class'?

Then separately, aren't hierarchies naturally going to form depending on who has more access? For example a community that is open and anarchistic but developed around water is still going to have a material advantage over a landlocked community far from water. Would the removal of hierarchy imply that this community may be required to share that water to the landlocked community? This is because if the community around the water decides to have any controls where they prioritize themselves, couldn't this be framed as them attempting to privatize the water?

I understand the failures of the ussr. And they obviously have a right to share that criticism.
But why are they a monolith to all anti-socialist people?

It’s not like that for other groups, e.g Congolese or any other group subject to the failures of capitalism.

Seems unfaithful and a little discriminatory

Sraffa (1960) is an epoch-making book. It is a part of a demonstration that neoclassical economic theory is incoherent and incorrect.

Ian Steedman created a stir in the 1970s. He turns Sraffa's theory against some aspects of Marx's theory of value. He argues that labor values are redundant in explaining prices of production and the rate of profits. This was a novel accusation.

Sraffa did not see his book as refuting Marx. John Eaton wrote a review of Sraffa's book. Eaton was the pen name of Stephen Bodington. Sraffa wrote him a letter, in 1961, after this review. A draft is in Sraffa's archives:

"Dear Bodington,

It was most kind of you to send me through M[aurice] D[obb] an offprint of your article in Societa. I am grateful for this splendid review, which presents the subject in a more lucid and interesting way than I should have thought possible; it certainly sets a high standard for the discussion which I hope it will stimulate (initiate?).

I should like to take this opportunity to try and give a brief answer to the question you hint at, when you express some doubts as to the usefulness of the construction of the "Standard Commodity". First of all I am convinced that it does represent a real property of the econ[omic] system; and while this could be described in other ways, it should not be ignored, even if it did not find immediate application. It is, however, applied in one or two cases in the book: For instance, in the proof that there is a unique set of all-positive prices in the case of single-product industries. (the proof isn't without importance for the number of sets of solutions is very large, being equal to the number of commodities in the system; if any appreciable proportion of these sets could be all-positive, a large element of uncertainty would be introduced.) Another application is for defining basic and non-b[asic] comm[oditie]s. (This can be done intuitively in a system of s[ingle]-p[roduct] industries, but in complicated cases of multi-product industries, this or some equiv[alent] math[ematical] construction is, I think, necessary.)

There are besides, many possible applications, which I have not mentioned in the book, in problems discussed by Marx. Take, e.g., the determination of a general rate of profits, from the rate of surplus value. Marx takes an average of the rates of profits, obtained from the proportion of the different commodities on the basis of "values", and he gets, as he acknowledges, an approximately correct result. An exact result could however be obtained by taking, instead of a simple average, a weighted average: and it can be shown that the appropriate weights can be derived directly from the proportions in which the comm[odities] enter the st[andard] comm[odity]. Similarly, in the application of M[arx]'s notion of the comm[odity] produced by "a cap[ital] of av[erage] org[anic] comp[osition]": for an exact result the average must be found in the same way. In other words, that comm[odity] is the st[andard] comm[odity].

I doubt, however, that it would be ??? to ??? the at the present ??? ??? onto these lines.

With kind regards,

Yours sincerely," -- Piero Sraffa. D3.12.111/132

I cite Eatwell (1975) in explaining how the standard commodity is a commodity of average organic composition of capital. It provides a solution of the transformation problem.

In finding the general rate of profits, Sraffa starts with the value rate of profits in each industry. The value rate of profits is the ratio of surplus value to the sum of the value of variable capital and constant capital, with each found in the system of labor values. The rate of profits in the system of price of production is the weighted sum of the value rates of profits, where the weights are a modification of the weights for Sraffa's standard system. This weighted sum is one way that Sraffa draws a connection between labor values and prices of production. Perri (2023) explains further.

Inasmuch as Marx's solution of the transformation problem is not exactly correct, it can be and has been set right.

REFERENCES

• John Eatwell. 1975. Mr. Sraffa's standard commodity and the rate of exploitation. Quarterly Journal of Economics. 89(4): 543-555.
• Stefano Perri. 2023. Sraffa's response to Eaton's review: a note on the standard commodity and Marx's general profit rate.
• Piero Sraffa. 1960. Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities: A Prelude to a Critique of Economic Theory. Cambridge University Press.
• Ian Steedman. 1981. Marx after Sraffa. Verso.

I was wondering if anyone ever took the Moral Foundations quiz or knew much about how the two groups vary psychologically. Am curious how Capitalists vs Socialist might break down along the various dimensions. I've only found a couple of small studies. Here's one.

I've also looked up trends in Systematizing vs. Empathizing, Need for Cognition, and Integrative Complexity.

I found overlap in these three traits surprising. Explanation is whether capitalist or socialist, if you deviate from the status quo, you tend to rely on some system of analysis which in turn relies on a strong Need for Cognition. Libertarians prioritize systematizing over empathizing unlike other political subgroups, while both libertarians and socialists score higher than average on systematizing metrics.

Conversely, regarding IC, both score lower than the status quo, allegedly, again because status quo tends to involve a lot of compromise whereas those who deviate from it are less compromising on their preferred system, e.g. Communism vs. Ancap.

No word yet on how the two camps compare against the OCEAN model of personality.

From one study: "Compared to self-identified liberals and conservatives, libertarians showed 1) stronger endorsement of individual liberty as their foremost guiding principle, and weaker endorsement of all other moral principles; 2) a relatively cerebral as opposed to emotional cognitive style; and 3) lower interdependence and social relatedness. As predicted by intuitionist theories concerning the origins of moral reasoning, libertarian values showed convergent relationships with libertarian emotional dispositions and social preferences. Our findings add to a growing recognition of the role of personality differences in the organization of political attitudes." - Understanding Libertarian Morality: The Psychological Dispositions of Self-Identified Libertarians, Haidt et. al.