i'm not really getting his point, here. he's citing marx, but he seems to be arguing against communism.....?

the article he's rebutting is fairly clear to me: if you invest, you will get rewards. whether the investment is coming from capitalists and banks or a "worker's state" seems secondary to the obvious point, which is indeed a no brainer. the article also points out rather clearly that a substantial part of the increase in productivity is the result of mechanization. the entire thing is a horrific straw man. i'm not sure if it was purposefully ignored or not, but the point made was that mechanization requires an educated workforce, that investing in education will lead to better and better technology which will increase in productivity.

missing the point is one thing, but where this kay guy goes through the looking glass is when he seems to suggest that this is terrible because it reduces the amount of labour required. but, that's the whole premise of communism: that increases in technology will lead to super production, which will emancipate humanity and usher in a new era of "civilization".

i run across this producerist garbage a lot. half the time, i think it's union propaganda designed to confuse workers into thinking that there's no future beyond the factory. yet, that's a conspiracy theory where none is necessary. occam's razor is that the guy's never actually read any socialist theory. the internet's a great place for people to run off about things they know little about, but it would be nice if sites like libcom were more carefully about what they give space to.

as an aside, what's the suggestion? lower wages in order to prevent mechanization in order to keep more jobs? if so, that's essentially identical to the ancap argument that the minimum wage should be abolished. the article would be better off in a place like ancap.com.

http://libcom.org/blog/decent-wages-decent-capitalism-08112013