We dive into the centuries-old controversy of economic value: is it determined by the objective difficulty of bringing goods to market or by the subjective preferences of consumers? The discussion frames this conflict using Adam Smith’s famous water-diamond paradox. We explore the 1870s marginal revolution, where economists like Menger, Jevons, and Walras developed subjective theories based on the principle of diminishing marginal utility. This analytical method also served an ideological purpose, directly undermining socialist critiques by denying any objective anchor for value. The talk explains how modern neoclassicism attempts to reconcile objective and subjective factors, but due to its obsession with equilibrium, exhibits value nihilism - the assertion that economic value does not really exist. Economics remains "half a science" due to its inability to analyze dynamics and movement over time.

A wide-ranging conversation among participants in the econophysics Discord server, featuring Ian Wright, Alex Creiner and Leone. The discussion primarily centers on Wright's provocative idea of "capital as a real god," a concept suggesting that capital functions as an emergent control system with its own primitive intentionality, goals, and representations, quasi-independent of human will. The participants also explore the concept of "occult magic" in politics and economics, likening it to a reality-driven fantasy where narratives obscure underlying mechanisms, and real possibilities for change. Further topics include the role of dialectical thinking in science, the challenges of socialist planning, and modernization of Marxist value theory.The conversation is animated by the desire to understand and transform social structures through both scientific rigor and conscious collective action.

Econophysics Discord server: https://discord.gg/9jZYkRYYWAIan Wright: https://ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/Leone: https://www.indep.network/Alex Creiner: https://www.youtube.com/@TexTalksSometimes https://alexcreiner.com/docs/about/

“A god abides with us still. And if we wish to see its face we need merely reach into our own pockets.”

Sequel to “Marx on Capital as a Real God” that expands on Marx’s comparison of money with Christ. I discuss Christ’s real presence, demon summoning, our collective dark enchantment, and how capitalism reproduces a great sacrificial exchange between a people and its god.

“The essence of money is … the mediating activity or movement, the human, social act by which man’s products mutually complement one another, is estranged from man and becomes the attribute of money, a material thing outside man. Since man alienates this mediating activity itself, he is active here only as a man who has lost himself and is dehumanized; the relation itself between things, man’s operation with them, becomes the operation of an entity outside man and above man. Owing to this alien mediator – instead of man himself being the mediator for man – man regards his will, his activity and his relation to other men as a power independent of him and them. His slavery, therefore, reaches its peak. It is clear that this mediator now becomes a real God, for the mediator is the real power over what it mediates to me. Its cult becomes an end in itself.”

K. Marx, Comments on James Mill, 1844.

The question I address is whether Marx’s “real God” is metaphor or science.

Talk presented at the Communist University 2020, organised by the CPGB (UK).

This talk examines the significance of the theory of computation for the perennial philosophical problem of the identity of thought and being. I give an accessible overview of the history and main results of computability theory, and then discuss the Church-Turing thesis and its generalizations. I then consider our epistemic states in possible worlds where we are, or are not, computationally equivalent to nature, and therefore under what circumstances we might break through the Turing barrier. The main argument is that deciding our computational equivalence to nature is transcendentally undecidable, and therefore will we never halt on this decision problem. In consequence, the identity of thought and being is a purely “scholastic matter” (Marx’s 2nd thesis on Feuerbach) and we have no rational reason to suppose that any persistent unintelligibility in nature cannot, one day, yield its secrets.

We cannot know we know; and we cannot know we cannot know.

First 43 mins: main talk. 43 mins to 1 hour 17 mins: discussion by participants. Last 16 mins: my response.

Can materialism explain human consciousness? Not according to an influential argument in the philosophy of mind (the “hard problem of consciousness”). In this talk, I (i) sketch a materialist theory of consciousness, (ii) explain an idealist rejection of the possibility of any such theory, (iii) discuss the philosophical flaws of this rejection, and (iv) explain, in materialist terms, why idealism is nonetheless attractive to many people. I close by pointing out that the “hard problem of consciousness” unconsciously frames subjectivity in terms of a bourgeois owner of private property, and therefore is the hard problem of justifying social inequality in disguise.

35 minutes talk, 40 mins discussion, 10 minutes response.

Joshua Dávila’s 2023 book, “Blockchain Radicals: how capitalism ruined crypto and how to fix it” is an important and visionary, yet grounded, book on how blockchains, used correctly, are a tremendous gift to anti-capitalist organizing. Anyone wanting to build working class unity, across time and space, should read it.

In this talk and discussion we review some of the embryonic examples of anti-capitalist initiatives that use the blockchain.

30 mins talk followed by 1 hour of discussion.

This is a recording of a talk given on 4th November 2022 in Oxford. I discuss the spooky relationship between Victorian spirit summoning and the “phantom-like objectivity” of value.

This is a ghost story, and like all good ghost stories, it’s true.

Talk (40 mins)

"A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. So far as it is a value in use, there is nothing mysterious about it, whether we consider it from the point of view that by its properties it is capable of satisfying human wants, or from the point that those properties are the product of human labor. It is as clear as noon-day, that man, by his industry, changes the forms of the materials furnished by Nature, in such a way as to make them useful to him. The form of wood, for instance, is altered, by making a table out of it. Yet, for all that, the table continues to be that common, every-day thing, wood. But, so soon as it steps forth as a commodity, it is changed into something transcendent. It not only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation to all other commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves out of its wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than “table-turning” ever was."

Marx, Capital, Volume 1, “The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof”

A 30 mins talk on the history and significance of spirit possession, and why the modern commercial subject is also possessed. Talk given in Oxford on 11 May 2023.

Erratum: the first recorded case of spirit possession was from ~4000 BC in Ancient Egypt.

Remarks on the missing theory of semantic reference in economic theory.

Being, Nothing and Becoming in the structure of the primes.

Part 2 of 2.

Being, Nothing, and Becoming interpreted in terms of the simplest possible feedback equations.

Part 1 of 2.

A popular objection to Marx’s labor theory of value is that human labor alone doesn’t create profits: labor must be mixed with capital and land to produce useful output; and, anyway, machines can replicate many tasks that humans perform — there’s nothing special about human labor. Take a human taxi driver. Replace them with a robot taxi driver (some future version of self-driving cars). There’s no difference. The robot passes a Turing test for being a taxi driver. And the company still makes a profit. Hence, human labour is not the sole cause of profit, and the labour theory of value is false.

In this talk I explain why this view is wrong, but nonetheless gives us a useful entry point for gaining a deeper understanding of Marx’s theory of surplus-value, and why the origin of profit is human labor alone.

In the talk I (i) briefly review Marx’s theory of surplus-value, (ii) explain why materialists accept that, in principle, all human capabilities can be automated, (iii) describe a Turing Test for Marx’s theory of surplus-value, (iv) emphasize the importance of understanding that Marx’s theory of surplus-value is irreducibly dynamic in nature, (v) discuss the ideological inversion that causes people to think that machines can create value, (vi) discuss the macroeconomic data that reveals a clear empirical signature that labor creates profit, and (vii) close with some speculations on what may happen when humanity, driven by the blind imperatives of the alien demiurge, is finally forced to abolish itself.

At the top of the pyramid is a baleful eye, Capital — a real God, the demiurge of the world — that controls every aspect of our lives. Marx scaled the pyramid and gazed into the depths of the horror. Human cognition against alien cognition. Rationality against irrationality. Did Marx retain his sanity, or did he lose it?

A 40 minutes introduction on the genesis of Marx’s transformation problem.

Short talk that summarises the 1930’s book “The Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution”, followed by brief critical remarks. Useful, I hope, if you’d like to get a high-level summary of its main propositions.

This is a recording of a talk given on 9th June 2022 in Oxford. I discuss the two sides of Newton: the enchanted medieval Christian — believer in occult spirits that move the universe — and the disenchanted early modern scientist — believer in mechanisms, laws and the experimental method. I discuss Newton’s Arianism and his speculations that a Cosmic Christ maintained the laws of nature both in the macrocosm (the incorporeal transmitter of action at a distance) and in the microcosm (the alchemical spirit or “fire at the heart of the world”). But his decades as Master of the Royal Mint did not yield any significant economic theory. For Newton the commercial world — populated by chiselers, counterfeiters and market hagglers — was already disenchanted, almost godless — and therefore no hidden spirits maintained its motion. This modern myth, of an entirely secular realm of economics, persists to this day.

40 minutes talk.

In 1874 the mathematician Georg Cantor published a paper that claimed to prove the existence of an infinite hierarchy of infinities, each more vast than the infinity before it, stretching out forever like some vast alien landscape. Cantor had achieved the seemingly impossible feat of counting beyond infinity. If true, this is astonishing intellectual achievement.

However, the existence of higher infinities is, on the face of it, absurd, for one very simple reason: infinity, by definition, is bigger than anything, and therefore there cannot be anything bigger than it. And we cannot practically count up to infinity. So what’s the use of postulating abstract structures that we cannot possibly construct?

Cantor’s reasoning is highly abstract. Can we trust it? And, even if we can, does it matter? Does it make any practical difference to our lives? Are there material consequences? Perhaps Cantor’s higher infinities identify deep, hidden structures that we’ve yet to fully interact with or notice in our empirical stream of experience? Or perhaps Cantor’s higher infinities are like the medieval proofs for the existence of God? We might grant that Cantor’s argument has some kind of logical necessity, but the premises just don’t connect to the reality we actually live in.

In this talk I give my (personal) conclusion on the status of higher infinities. I point out that, surprisingly, Cantor’s theory does entail some empirical predictions. But currently there’s no evidence to support those predictions (and quite a lot of evidence that suggests material reality prevents them).

But reality has a way of surprising us. We shouldn’t dismiss the importance of inductive creative leaps. So the jury is still out. A materialist attitude also includes the cheerful acceptance of ignorance. Sometimes we simply don’t yet know!

Cantor’s ideas raise questions about what rules of logical reasoning we are willing to accept. So they raise very profound and foundational issues about the identity of thought and being.

The fun part: you too will be learn to count beyond infinity (with the help of this handout: https://ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/infinityhandout.pdf). One of the surprising aspects of Cantor’s proof of higher infinities is its elementary nature. With just a small amount of effort, anyone can understand it.

30 minutes talk.

Start-ups reproduce capitalism by creating new ventures that split people into an owning class (who lay claim on the firm’s residual income) and a working class (who don’t own the firm, and get paid a rental price for their labor). This social relationship is exploitative, in the very precise sense that the owning class – after a tipping point when their initial capital advances (plus any risk premium) are repaid – steal value created by others. Although not recognized as such, this is institutionalized theft, which, if the venture grows and becomes successful, operates on a global scale. But it doesn’t have to be this way. In this talk, I briefly explain how worker-owned co-operatives are jointly owned by their working members, and (ideally) shun equity capital (which cedes ownership of the firm to non workers) and instead raise loan capital (which avoids that).

The first 25 minutes are an introductory talk, and the last 15 minutes respond to points raised in the discussion (not recorded).

An overview of a dynamic, stochastic, agent-based macroeconomic model that replicates many of the empirical distributions of capitalist economies, and also demonstrates that the ultimate drivers of economic inequality are markets, the wage system and exploitation.

30 talk followed by 15 minutes response to points raised by attendees (not recorded).

Accompanying paper: "The social architecture of capitalism", Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Volume 346, Issues 3–4, 2005, Pages 589-620.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378437104010726