I have pointed out that Marxism IS NOT “a belief in THE class struggle” any more than Christians are the only people who believe in evangelism.

Marxism believes that the value of any item is “the amount of objective labor time in it.” Marx said that a diamond, for example, is worth more than water when you are thirsting in the desert because of the objective labor time spent to get a diamond. This is a basic of Marxism, and this is an example of the way you can embarrass the crap out of those irritating people who think they are sophisticated just by telling them how silly what t hey think is so sophisticated really IS.

Respectable conservatives get paid specifically for not knowing or mentioning these basics.

This objective labor caused a serious problem for Soviet planners. You see, if it doesn’t matter whether a good is in one place or another it means transportation has no objective value whatsoever.

And in RUSSIA transportation is a big deal.

What about skill? Marxism scientifically determines the value of each unit of labor by adding the fraction of time. Holy Objective Labor Time, to a particular piece of work. So if you train for three years and work for thirty years, you add ten percent to each piece of work you did during the thirty years.

Soviet history described Marx as “the scientist who discovered surplus value.” Today, a major scientific organization in Britain, I forget which, lists Marx as a scientist.

This “surplus value” is the difference between what a laborer needs to live on, subsistence, and the cost of the good. Since only the worker produces anything, and that only when he is actually producing something, all other costs, including transportation, constitute “exploitation” according to this “labor theory of value.”

If you actually know any economics, the word “subsistence means nothing. Do you mean “subsistence as the amount of calories one can survive on? Do you mean the cost of a diet that will allow one to work his best?

To Marx, the latter question had no meaning, because there is no “best” in the Labor Theory of Value. It is the amount of Objective Labor TIME that makes something valuable.

Value is important in the socialist phase of Marxist history. You can always tell a person is a Marxist when he refers to Communist states as “socialist.” A documentary on Jim Jones of Kool-Aid Fame said he studied “progressive socialists” like Marx and Lenin, both of whom would be surprised to find they were no Communists.

To Marx, communism is the inevitable but EVENTUAL result of his evolution of society. For a Marxist to describe anything on this earth as “communist” would be exactly like a Christian describing someplace as LITERALLY, Heaven.

The Marxist world contains socialist states, no Communist ones.

The socialist state must be planned, and Marxist Labor Theory of Value is the Scientific Basis on which this planning is to take place. OK now to the point of real Marxist theory no respectable conservative will not mention most of all:

Marxism says the communist society will arrive because it is based on the Rousseau Assumption that animals and savages are peaceful, even the ones who have to kill for food. Animals have no class system. Animals have no borders or wars.

One cannot be a respectable conservative unless he follows a form of Wordism that makes these exact same assumptions so completely that no one on either side even mentions them.

Like every other “sophisticated” group, Marxists can best be embarrassed by an uncompromising reminder of what they are REALLY advocating.

When you remind them of it, complete with quotes, all they can do is sputter what Mommy Professor tldaught them to:

“You’re IGNORANT!”