thepeoplesinging

joined 3 months ago
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I would like some help understanding the Labor Theory of Value (lemmygrad.ml)
 

I promise I'm not a wrecker, I just have trouble finding Marxist sources for these things that aren't big books on top of what I'm already reading. I think I understand that it says the exchange value of a product is proportionate to the labor time used to create it. Am I getting that correct? More labor-intensive commodities, or products requiring more specialized tools to make would cost more. And I know I've heard the criticism before. Heard it pretty much all my life. "Is a cookie still worth its labor if it's burnt? Is a pie worth the labor if it's a shit pie?" I have heard people say that Marx addresses such criticisms in Capital, but I haven't gotten around to those tomes yet. Could someone explain to me how they are addressed and maybe straighten out other things I may have gotten wrong?

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Questions from a Real History N00b (lemmygrad.ml)
 

My parents had Copaganda The Show on in the room, and a Chinese character talked about how her parents were doctors during the cultural revolution, but were accused of using bourgeois science and were sentenced to reeducation. I don't know enough about the cultural revolution to know anything about that, so I googled. Naturally I found myself on Wikipedia (blech) where they talked about a variety of "bourgeois pseudoscience" ranging from phrenology and eugenics to psychology and sociology. These latter two were specific to the PRC. Of course I know better than to automatically believe NATOpedia, especially on topics like these, but I don't know any better places to look for accurate information, particularly in English. So I have a few questions.

  1. Where can I go to find these answers? I am aware of ProleWiki, but a lot of the pages I've seen have been more summary and less in-depth talks about these things.

  2. Is psychology and potentially psychiatry still considered bourgeois science? I have a variety of psychiatric disorders, and I would be upset if my communist utopia did not see fit to help me deal with them. I have heard of anti-psychiatry, and some random dude claiming it is popular on the left? Not jumping to believe them, but instead asking people who have a better chance of actually knowing.

  3. Is there any truth that the PRC did take these actions? Do they still? If I were to move to China, would I be unable to get psychiatric meds?