Yes you are correct. Everybody has to start somewhere though. I’m of the opinion that you must learn to walk before you learn to run. The average Janes/Joes are who I was referring too. You know, like the 50 y/o mom who wants to lose weight but hasn’t eaten a vegetable in a month. You know, just 101 basic stuff, then from there you can get more advanced with the methods you’re talking about. Personally I’m one of those average joe’s, not a pro athlete or body builder. Best I can do with my crazy schedule is the plate method and doing some physical activity like basketball/swimming/biking/hiking/ect. I must admit I don’t have the patience to take a ruler and a scale and get exact measurements of everything I eat, although I really should. If you have any recommendations to find an easy way to do that I’m all ears.

From what I’ve been told that method will at best work out the wrong muscles, and at worst cause serious injuries like hip damage or blowing out your knee. Like you can go lower than 90 degrees, but going too low will cause issues. Same with the feet angle/width thing, sure you can get away with it for awhile, but over time you can cause strain and damage. Maybe I’m wrong though, maybe I really have just been talking to the wrong people. There’s a wide range of opinions on this stuff, so the best you can do is talk to a wide variety of people and try to come up with a consensus the best you can.

Nutrition is a great point, so often I see people that eat like shit while working out and are surprised they aren’t getting results. The Canadian government has a good general guide for nutrition: https://food-guide.canada.ca/en/ obviously this is just a general guide. Depending on how you want to build your body will alter these ratios slightly, again talk to someone that knows what they’re doing about this, don’t just listen to me.

Exactly, you can jack yourself up really bad quickly by doing the wrong thing. Especially when it comes to things like squats. It doesn’t hurt to ask a reputable source (COUGH not youtube COUGH) to figure out if you’re doing it right. It’ll save your body and give you a better workout in the end.

Wow, youtube told me I’m wrong?! Well that settles it then. I’ll be sure to go tell every athlete, coach, and professional I’ve ever worked with that they’re wrong too! In the future I’ll be sure to cross reference my medical advice with social media, that was my bad. Thank you invent_the_future for your great insight, God Bless.

Check this out, this guy really shows you how to do it! https://yewtu.be/watch?v=vPPk0QqQW4k

Jokes aside, don’t get your medical advice from grifters or strangers on the internet kids. That includes me, I was just using my case as an example. Point is to go ask a few professionals IRL that do this for a living how to do whatever it is you’re doing, then cross-reference the information.

Never be afraid to ask for help. This goes for all physical activity, always seek out proper form & technique from a reputable source.

For example: The proper way to squat is to have your feet straight shoulder width apart, put the bar on your shoulder blades, stick your ass out, slightly bend at the waist, keep your back straight, and go down until your legs bend @ a 90 degree angle like you’re sitting in a chair.

When I started squatting I had my feet wide and angled outward, the bar across my neck, ass bended in, back curved extremely inward, and was going way lower than I should’ve. Plus I had more weight than I should’ve started with. I bet it was funny as hell watching me do squats lol but it royally fucked my neck/back up. Moral of the story is figure out the proper technique BEFORE doing physical activity.

New phone, who’s this??

Answer:

1. As we’ve seen so far wages are determined by technology, the cost of labor/production, the cost of keeping the species alive, and the general prosperity of the capitalist.
2. It just means the general well being of the population of their respective country. I live in the imperial core, so yes the standard of living has risen pretty drastically over 100 years. This is mostly due to unequal exchange via the forced colonization/exploitation/extraction of colonized group’s labor/resources in both the imperial core and the global south.
3. The capitalist keeps workers busy for prolonged periods of time, well beyond the amount needed to cover their wages. This is the way capitalists squeeze every drop of labor-power out of it’s workers for maximum profits for the capitalist.
4. The gap between rich and poor has drastically widened since the implementation of Reaganomics of the 80’s. While this has always been the case, it’s gotten particularly bad since then. Differences among the ‘working class’ here has been amplified as well, with more people falling into desperation and poverty over the years. Basic necessities for survival are becoming more out of reach for your average person, including access to food, water, and shelter.
5. I’m going to let Marx answer this one: “The selling price of the commodities produced by the worker is divided, from the point of view of the capitalist, into three parts: First, the replacement of the price of the raw materials advanced by him, in addition to the replacement of the wear and tear of the tools, machines, and other instruments of labor likewise advanced by him; Second, the replacement of the wages advanced; and Third, the surplus leftover – i.e., the profit of the capitalist. While the first part merely replaces previously existing values, it is evident that the replacement of the wages and the surplus (the profit of capital) are as a whole taken out of the new value, which is produced by the labor of the worker and added to the raw materials. And in this sense we can view wages as well as profit, for the purpose of comparing them with each other, as shares in the product of the worker.” This answer explains why the capitalist gets surplus profit, and thus becomes rich via exploitation. It doesn’t cover bankers, landlords, or stock-brokers, who get rich via siphoning off and the swindling of the wages from the workers.
6. The cotton gin is a very tragic, but great example of this process. With the introduction of the cotton gin, it greatly lowered the labor-power necessary for production, and lowered the price of cotton on the market. Thereby increasing profits for the plantation owners, caused rapid expansion of the slave trade, and textile industry. The vast political/moral consequences and human devastation caused from this are ongoing.
7. I’m not entirely sure what this question has to do with the reading. Marx makes no distinction between ‘labor/capital intensive’ industries in the chapter. If I were to guess, I’d say that construction would be an example of a ‘labor intensive’ industry. While being a landlord or realtor would be an example of a ‘capital intensive’ industry. Automation of grocery store checkouts would be an example of a labor intensive industry switching into a more capital intensive industry. Meanwhile you could make the argument that the increase of automation has increased the need for workers to maintain the machines, thus turning it from a capital intensive industry into a labor intensive one. Might be a stretch but those were the best examples I could think of off of the top of my head.
8. Seizing the means of production and general redistribution under a worker run state.
9. I’d say ‘that’s interesting, please face the wall now’. Jokes aside, there is no correlation between rising wages and inflation. Nor will the capitalist pay a ton of money to move production somewhere else over a mild increase in wages. Capital flight will only happen if they fear losing everything, or if the cost of production is vastly cheaper somewhere else. Raising the minimum wage by a dollar won’t cause capital flight.
10. Socialism is about human empowerment, eliminating surplus profit from the capitalist and giving back the worker the value they created is directly related to socialism. I would chuckle and say that your status has nothing to do with how much money you posses. Rather it’s about your relationship to the means of production, and workers should be entitled to the value they create via their labor-power. If somebody robs me of my possessions, would it be greedy to take back what is rightfully yours?
11. It doesn’t, early on in the reading he makes this distinction between labor and labor-power. Using my answer from last time: Labor is when you do work in general. Labor-power is a commodity that you sell to a capitalist in exchange for wages. If I labor to make a pizza at home then sell that pizza to a buyer, that would be an example of me ‘selling my labor’. If I were to go to the capitalist pizza shop owner and agree to make pizza for them, for a certain amount of time, for a fixed wage. This would be an example of me ‘selling my labor power’ as a commodity to the capitalist.

Wow! Are you a history major? That was an impressive display of knowledge on fascism and Europe. That was a very interesting and cool approach to answering these questions.

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My answers to the study guide:

1. Labour is when you do work in general. Labour-power is a commodity that you sell to a capitalist in exchange for wages.
2. If I labour to make a pizza at home then sell that pizza to a buyer, that would be an example of me ‘selling my labour’. If I were to go to the capitalist pizza shop owner and agree to make pizza for them, for a certain amount of time, for a fixed wage. This would be an example of me ‘selling my labour power’ as a commodity to the capitalist.
3. Maybe I’m wrong here but I don’t believe he makes the argument that supply and demand play no factor in prices. He is simply adding the cost of production into the equation.
4. Sellers compete on the market to offer the lowest price, buyers will go with the lowest price, thus a race to the bottom. I can’t see an example where Marx uses products in short supply while also decreasing in price at the same time, maybe I missed something. I see him making the opposite argument, that when supply is low, the sellers will work together to drive the price up.
5. The cost of production is directly related to the price of a commodity, thus giving the capitalist incentive to cut labour costs. Giving the capitalist the biggest portion of the profits.
6. Wages boil down to the bare necessities for keeping the species alive, able to work, produce future working offspring, and getting enough nutrients to get through a working day. Notice how he emphasizes the word species, there are plenty of individual workers who don’t get enough to fill these basic needs. Rather the goal is to keep the species alive just enough to keep the money machine working.
7. According to this logic with free public education wages would decrease, simply because the cost of giving workers the bare necessities would go down significantly. I argue despite this potential problem there should be free or a reduced cost of education, and that this logic too simplistic.
8. Although you might be able to make a ghoulish argument that increased immigration will lead to lower wages, I sure will not. I think that framing is missing a lot of context while leading to dangerous and xenophobic conclusions. I don’t think it’s as simple as more immigrants = bad wages. Frankly I find that rhetoric disgusting and reeking of fascistic principles. Marx didn’t say a word about immigration during the reading. Pisses me off that the study guide would even include that, as if it’s appropriate to ‘debate’ human beings living their lives outside of the arbitrary border they were born into. Call me a moralist if you want, I don’t care, I refuse to engage in any further discussion or ‘debate’ on this subject. If you think we shouldn’t allow immigration because of a potential drop in wages, I’d be happy to smash the keyboard over your head and force feed you the pieces.
9. He’s making the argument, in an antiquated gross way, about how by themselves (people or objects) they are only that person or object. It’s the way that person or object interacts in the system is when they become an integral part of said system. For example a car sitting in the garage is just a car, if I use that car to deliver pizzas for a capitalist it becomes an instrument in the capitalist system.
10. He’s stating that capitalism is a social relation of production, just like other systems are about how a given society chooses to produce.
11. I’m going to use my example of a car again. A car sitting in the garage is just a car, if I use that car to deliver pizzas for a capitalist it becomes an instrument in the capitalist system.
12. The dead dominate the living in the sense of ‘old money’. Great great grandfather accumulated capital in the slave trade, great grandfather expanded that capital by getting rich on the war machine, grandpa expanded that capital with a pizza chain, dad expanded that capital on real estate, the son inherits all of that capital, and so on. This is what I mean by ‘old money’, it’s been proven that most wealth/capital is inherited. This is how the dead come into play, because it was accumulation of the sweat/blood/tears of dead workers that allowed the rich family to have such vast capital today.

Thank you comrade I really appreciate it

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I think that was a great takeaway from the reading. It is fascinating to see how capitalism effects different classes under the same system. The writing you quoted at the end of the chapter was great! I agree with their assessment that capitalism is a self defeating ideology, and that the same forces that create/drive it, will inevitably lead to it’s own demise. It MUST be gotten rid of, it CAN be gotten rid of!

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Thank you mods for pinning the post