The Angry Bear

Socially Ambivalent Labour Time III: Theories of Surplus Value, chapter 7 and addenda to part 1 In an earlier post, I mentioned that in chapter seven of TSV Marx explicitly excluded William Godwin from his historical review of theories of surplus value: In accordance with the plan of my work socialist and communist writers are entirely excluded from the historical reviews. These reviews are only intended to show on the one hand in what form the...

Tags: open thread

May JOLTS report continues to show a jobs market out of equilibrium This morning’s JOLTS report for May continued all of the trends we saw in April – a huge amount of unfilled job openings, a comparatively weak level of actual hiring, an enhanced number of people quitting their jobs, and record low layoffs and discharges. To begin with, on a month over month basis, all 4 of the metrics above, plus total separations, declined: As...

Much of Michigan is touting Republican State Senator Ed McBroom who led an investigation into Michigan’s supposed voting fraud. He found none and openly admitted there was none in his report. Senator and dairy farmer Ed McBroom also called for the prosecution of those who capitalized on the supposed voting fraud by starting defense funds and collecting donations. He also called upon the Democrat Michigan AG to investigate those who were promoting...

Coronavirus dashboard for July 6: bad news and *relatively* “good” news about the Delta Wave  In the near future, there appears to be bad news and *relatively* “good” news for the US. The bad news is that the “delta wave” is spreading, and we should expect a real outbreak on the order of last summer’s by early August. The *relatively* “good” news is that the death rate is likely not to be nearly so bad, if the experience in the UK is any...

No, liberals are not to blame for political polarization Over the long weekend, Kevin Drum picked a fight by saying that you should “blame liberals” for culture wars, arguing that liberals have shifted their positions much more over the past two decades than conservatives. This has provoked some strong counter-arguments, but what has struck me – as usual – is how little people have actually looked at the data. When you do so, there are at least...

This post will be a bit of a backtrack. While going through my notes for chapter 7 of Theories of Surplus Value, I discovered a printout of a page from the Grundrisse that I had overlooked when writing the post on that book. Although it does not contain the term socially necessary labour time, the two and a half page section with the same title as this post speaks volumes about the concept. First, a little context: the section follows discussions...

Utah and Beyond Tuesday, June 29, 2021: The small town of Lytton, British Columbia, Canada recorded a high of 121 degrees Fahrenheit. This was the highest ever recorded in Lytton, in British Columbia, in Canada. Wednesday, June 30, 2021, the small town of Lytton burned to the ground. On Monday, June 28, 2021, the temperature in Portland, Oregon reached 116 degrees Fahrenheit, the highest ever recorded. On that same day, Seattle recorded 108...

Tags: open thread

On The Centennial Of The Chinese Communist Party, EconoSpeak, Barkley Rosser July 1, 2021 is now over in China but for a few more moments it is still the centennial of the CCP where I am.  Just a couple of observations.  This is partly driven by seeing multiple posts on Econbrowser by “ltr” praising the CCP and not allowing for even a hint of crirticism. So indeed there is much to praise in the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) today, with...