The Beginning of the Transformation Problem Dark Age Marxism 2021-06-21 | 40 minutes talk on the origin of the "transformation problem" in Marx's theory of value.A companion article is here: ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/2021/08/13/the-genesis-of-the-transformation-problem-in-cosmonaut-magazinedarkmarxism.online
On Hegel’s ‘altogether new concept of scientific procedure’ Dark Age Marxism 2026-05-09 | A talk on Hegel's methodological approach in the Science of Logic; and why "the one true method" of metaphysics must be identical with its content.30 mins talk. 1 hour discussion.
Hegel vs logic Dark Age Marxism 2026-02-26 | A talk about formal logic and Hegel's critique of it.We begin with Aristotle's syllogistic and its dominance throughout the medieval period; then discuss the transition to modern logic in the late 19th century, specifically Frege's development of predicate logic, which is now canonical. The transition was not just a technical improvement but a fundamental shift in how we understand the nature of logical categories -- a shift from a logic of internal relations to one of external relations, and the introduction of a sharp distinction between syntax and semantics.The modern era is marked by the proliferation of different logics, some adopting incompatible logical principles. Modern logic hasn't realized Leibniz's dream of a universal calculus of reasoning, but instead has given us a forest of logics, each with its own domain of application and its own rules.So logical pluralism challenges the idea of a single, universal logic. Drawing on Hegel, modern logical pluralism implies no special logic can claim foundational significance, fully justify its own normative force, or even be said to be truly logical. Our modern logic is technically sophisticated but perhaps we've become lost in the forest. Hegel's vision of a universal logic -- one that explains the conditions for the possibility of any form of reasoning -- points a way out.
Marx and the phases of capitalist development (special guest: Nikolaos Chatzarakis) Dark Age Marxism 2025-12-28 | Guest speaker Nikolaos Chatzarakis, Professor of Economics at the New School for Social Research, joins the Oxford Communist Correspondence Society to explore the structural evolution of capitalism. Nikos examines the dynamic relationship between the "Law of Accumulation" and the "Falling Rate of Profit," arguing that these economic forces are the primary engines behind the major shifts in global history.Key topics discussed:- The Mechanics of Profit: How the rising "organic composition of capital" creates an inherent downward pressure on profitability.- Long Cycles of Development: From the age of steam and railways to the emergence of digital networks and Artificial Intelligence.- Formal vs. Real Subsumption: How capital takes control of the labor process to squeeze out higher levels of productivity.- Modern Crises: A look at how current trends - including the gig economy, "techno-feudalism," and the 2008 financial crisis - fit into Marx’s long-term predictions.40 mins talk followed by ~1 hour of discussion.
Joint labor-values Dark Age Marxism 2025-11-11 | The problem of defining values for joint production technologies (production processes with multiple outputs) is longstanding. Critics have demonstrated that Marx's concept of value, when applied to these cases, can yield undefined, zero or negative values, which makes little sense, and therefore reject the logical coherence of the concept of value. In this talk I introduce a generalized definition of value, the joint labor-values, which resolves these problems.
Is value in the eye of the beholder? Subjectivism in the theory of economic value Dark Age Marxism 2025-10-31 | 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.
The God We Dont Believe In: magic, science, and social transformation Dark Age Marxism 2025-09-19 | 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: discord.gg/9jZYkRYYWAIan Wright: ianwrightsite.wordpress.comLeone: https://www.indep.network/Alex Creiner: youtube.com/@TexTalksSometimes alexcreiner.com/docs/about
Macrodynamics of the classical (93%) and super-integrated (100%) labor theory of value Dark Age Marxism 2025-06-14 | Ricardo and Marx both understood that classical values cannot directly explain the structure of natural prices, an insight re-articulated, in modern general equilibrium analysis, as the Ricardian "93% labor theory of value" [1]. This talk re-articulates this result in a dynamic nonlinear model of classical competition where out-of-equilibrium market prices converge to natural prices. We state the fundamental reason why classical values only approximate natural prices, whereas a generalization of classical values, the super-integrated values [2,3,4,5], are directly proportional to them. We conclude with some (positive) implications for the further development of Marx's theory of value.This talk was presented at the AHE conference, London, June 2025.[1] Stigler, George J. (1958) "Ricardo and the 93% Labor Theory of Value." The American Economic Review 48, no. 3: 357\[Dash]67.[2] Wright, I. (2009). On nonstandard labour values, Marx's transformation problem and Ricardo's problem of an invariable measure of value. Boletim de Ciencias Economicas LII.[3] Wright, I. (2014). A category-mistake in the classical labour theory of value. Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics, 7(1), 27\[Dash]55.[4] Wright, I. (2015). The Law of Value: A contribution to the classical approach to economic analysis. PhD Thesis, Open University.[5] Wright, I. (2019). Marx's transformation problem and Pasinetti's vertically integrated subsystems. Cambridge Journal of Economics 43, no. 1: 169-186.
Idealism and materialism in the philosophy of mind Dark Age Marxism 2025-05-30 | 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 the 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.
What are gods? Dark Age Marxism 2025-02-07 | An exercise in open philosophy: towards an analytic definition of god and gods. I propose a definition of an egregore and then apply it to different cases. We discover, among other mundane facts, that Lovecraft's Yog-Sothoth really is a god in virtue of the Typhonian Order's occult practices.~1 hour of talk followed by ~30 mins discussion.
Blockchain Radicals: on the work of Joshua Dávila (how to build socialism by earning 7.5% interest) Dark Age Marxism 2024-11-22 | 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.See also: ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/2024/11/22/blockchain-radicals-on-the-work-of-joshua-davila-or-how-to-build-socialism-by-earning-7-5-interest
Theorems and remarks on Marx’s transformation of the values of commodities to prices of production Dark Age Marxism 2024-11-08 | A short talk on Marx's transformation problem, and its solution, given at HM 2024.
Price-value dynamics with heterogeneous labor (Marxs first transformation problem) Dark Age Marxism 2024-10-28 | ianwrightsite.wordpress.comMarx proposed that more "complex" labor produces more value than "simple" labor in the same period of time. The question then is: by how much? Marx suggested that the coefficients that reduce complex forms of labor to quantities of "simple" or "average" labor are determined by a social process "that goes on behind the backs of the producers" (vol. 1). However, Marx offered multiple, inconsistent methods of determining the reduction coefficients and therefore bequeathed a `problem of heterogeneous labor' (Ekeland, 2007).Note that the problem of heterogeneous labor (reducing complex kinds of labor to simple kinds of labor) is distinct from the problem of heterogeneous labor productivity (relating different concrete labor times of the same kind to socially necessary labor time). In this talk I investigate the problem of heterogeneous labor while assuming homogeneous labor productivity.We'll examine the dynamics of prices and values in a model of a market economy where labor is heterogeneous. The model is a generalization of the classical macrodynamic model in Ch.7 of Wright (2016) with the addition of heterogeneous labor types and labor mobility, i.e. workers switch occupations (within and across generations) to maximize their income.We shall see that, when labor is heterogeneous, and in the absence of obstacles to labor mobility, then the law of value holds without modification; in other words, the economy has an `arbitrage-free' attractor state where profits and wages are uniform and equilibrium prices are proportional to values. In this primary case, reduction coefficients are theoretically superfluous. Marx, at the level of abstraction of volume 1, should not have introduced them and instead consistently adopted his "American solution" (Ekeland, 2007) where heterogeneous types of labor produce homogeneous quantities of value, all other things being equal.However, when labor mobility is restricted, and therefore the law of value cannot in principle fully manifest, equilibrium prices are not proportional to values (even in the absence of profits on money-capital tied-up in production). In this secondary case, a "mini" transformation problem arises: (i) values are independent of the distribution of wages but (ii) prices are not, hence (iii) values constrain prices but do not determine them. Values, under appropriate assumptions, should explain the structure of equilibrium prices. So Marx's proposal of reduction coefficients becomes relevant in the case of persistent wage differentials.We shall see that, in this case, equilibrium prices are proportional to values transformed by wage-weighted coefficients, where the coefficients measure the degree of unequal exchange between workers in different occupations. Also, given realistic assumptions on the degree of labor mobility, and observing that commodities are produced by a large mix of vertically-integrated labor types, then equilibrium prices are approximately proportional to standard, unweighted values, where the constant of proportionality is the average wage rate (this is a deterministic analogue of a probabilistic result derived by Farjoun and Machover (1983). The "mini" transformation problem is therefore readily solved.The law of value is the `social process that goes on behind the backs of the producers' that allocates our collective fungible labor-power (abstract labor) to heterogeneous tasks (concrete labor) via a social representation of that fungible power (value). Human labor-power is objectively homogeneous, in the sense that the average person can in principle perform any task (given appropriate training). The objective equality of our powers is the condition of possibility of our shared social practice of generalized commodity production. In consequence, the problem of heterogeneous labor reflects transient (out-of-equilibrium) and "accidental" features (e.g. institutional barriers and incentives, discrimination etc.) of a continual process of labor allocation in market economies where "the total labor-power of society ... counts here as one homogeneous mass of human labor-power" (vol. 1).I present examples of small-scale runs of the model that illustrate these points.Anders Ekeland. Marx’s four solutions to the problem of heterogeneous labour. In 9th Annual Conference of the Association of Heterodox Economics. 2007.Emmanuel Farjoun and Moshe Machover. Laws of Chaos: A Probabilistic Approach to Political Economy. Verso, 1983.Karl Marx. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, volume 1. Penguin, 1990.Ian Wright. The Law of Value: A Contribution to the Classical Approach toEconomic Analysis. PhD thesis, The Open University, 2016. URL https://doi.org/10.21954/ou.ro.0000ef2c.
Abundant theological niceties: power, substance, and form in Marx’s theory of value Dark Age Marxism 2024-05-31 | A summary of Marx's theory of value presented in Part 1 of Capital, with special attention to (i) his use of Aristotelian concepts of power, substance and form, (ii) how our social practices assign new roles and properties to the people and objects recruited to fulfill them, (iii) why abstract labor is not labor abstracted, but the exercise of abstract power, (iv) how the total labor-power of society is continually allocated to perform concrete tasks that satisfy effective demand (the law of value) via unequal exchange of quanta of abstract labor (commodities) for symbolic representations of quanta of abstract labor (money); in other words, how our collective spending determines the spending of our collective time.30 mins talk, 1 hour audience discussion, 15 mins responsePresented to the Oxford CCS on May 30th 2024.
Motion as contradiction: Zeno, Hegel and the calculus Dark Age Marxism 2024-01-27 | This talk, presented to the Oxford Communist Corresponding Society on Jan 26th 2024, examines the relationship between Zeno's ancient argument of the paradox of the arrow, which seems to demonstrates that motion is logically impossible, and the mathematical calculus, our most successful formal theory of change and motion. I argue that the calculus, when properly interpreted, does indeed solve Zeno's paradox by pointing to the necessity to understand reality as not only composed of what is, but also composed what isn't (i.e. absence or "negativity"), in the sense that motion (and change in general) is driven by "real contradictions", or causal structures that form closed-loops, such that (i) a component A represents the non-existence of the state of another component B, and (ii) the causal structure of the loop is such that the state of B becomes that which A represents. In other words, the mathematical calculus is remarkably consistent with the Hegelian theory of change.First 48 mins: main talk. 48 mins to 1 hour 12 mins: discussion by participants. Last 10 mins: my response.The PDF for the handout that accompanies the talk is at: ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/2024/01/27/motion-as-contradiction-zeno-hegel-and-the-calculus-audioThe longer essay on which this talk is based is at: ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/2023/10/26/motion-as-contradiction-zeno-hegel-and-the-calculus
On spirit possession Dark Age Marxism 2023-05-12 | 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.
Transcendental undecidability, and the identity of thought and being Dark Age Marxism 2023-03-03 | 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 generalisations. 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. The PDF for the handout that accompanies the talk is at: ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/2023/03/03/transcendental-undecidability-and-the-identity-of-thought-and-being-audio
Victorian Seances and Marxs Law of Value Dark Age Marxism 2022-11-04 | 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."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 labour. 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"Give feedback at ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/2022/11/04/victorian-seances-and-marxs-law-of-value
Interview on Marx’s Real God (Metaphysical Podcast) Dark Age Marxism 2022-06-26 | The nice people at The Metaphysical Podcast (Seattle) interviewed me about Marx’s Real God. We get into the differences between Marx’s Real God and the gods we’re more familiar with, the great power of egregores in shaping human history, capitalism as an inverted continuation of pre-capitalist sacrificial religions, social control systems, and why the Real God is demonic, the cause of enormous social ills, and therefore must be overthrown.Link to the Metaphysical Podcast: https://anchor.fm/laura-kipp/episodes/Alternative-HistoryPolitics-Ian-Wright-and-Dark-Marxism-e1h88e1Give feedback at ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/2022/05/22/interview-on-marxs-real-god-metaphysical-podcast
Isaac Newtons occult properties Dark Age Marxism 2022-06-26 | 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 chisellers, 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.Give feedback at ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/2022/06/15/isaac-newtons-occult-properties-audio
Dark Eucharist of the Real God Dark Age Marxism 2021-11-19 | "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" (youtube.com/watch?v=gvp8khkvoQQ) 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.Comments welcome on darkmarxism.onlineianwrightsite.wordpress.com/2021/11/25/dark-eucharist-of-the-real-godThe outro music is from the soundtrack of the movie, "A Dark Song" (2016).
Matt from Chapo Trap House on Capital as a Real God Dark Age Marxism 2021-08-25 | Clip from CushVlog episode youtube.com/watch?v=_rcuOjcJ4wk"Marx on Capital as a Real God" youtube.com/watch?v=gvp8khkvoQQ
Marxs irrational irrational commodity Dark Age Marxism 2021-03-16 | darkmarxism.onlineAt 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?Closing music: Alarm Will Sound performing Aphex Twin's "Cock/Ver 10"youtube.com/watch?v=j7yWCLTdaeA
Why machines dont create value Dark Age Marxism 2021-03-16 | darkmarxism.onlineA popular objection to Marx’s labour theory of value is that human labour alone doesn’t create profits: labour 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 labour. 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 labour 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) emphasise 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 labour 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.
What is abstract labour, and who does the abstracting? Dark Age Marxism 2020-06-12 | Talk on Marx's theory of value given to the Oxford CCS on 11 June 2020.ianwrightsite.wordpress.comPainting by Johfra Bosschart. Music from the movie A Dark Song (2016).
Hegelian contradiction and the prime numbers: Part 2 Dark Age Marxism 2020-04-05 | A talk given in Oxford Feb 2019 on a Hegelian interpretation of Riemann's Zeta function. I propose that the zeros of the Zeta function are moments in time when becoming, which is an infinity of contradictions, attains a state of pure being or pure nothing. This means that the arithmetical irreducibility of the primes is a manifestation of the metaphysical irreducibility of pure being and pure nothing.For the transcript and links to whiteboard mathematics and animated diagrams see: ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/2019/02/09/hegelian-contradiction-and-the-prime-numbers-part-2For Part 1 see: youtu.be/8sd6o9dTeio
Prolegomena to a Demonology of Capitalism Dark Age Marxism 2020-03-29 | A talk on the occult power that controls our lives (presented in Oxford, March 2020).ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/2020/03/05/prologomena-to-a-demonology-of-capitalism
The social architecture of capitalism Dark Age Marxism 2018-11-24 | Audio of talk given on Oxford, Nov 2017, on how the basic property relations of capitalism are the cause of extreme income and wealth inequality, and why it makes no sense to talk about inequality without also examining its root cause: class exploitation. More information at: ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/2017/11/16/the-social-architecture-of-capitalism
Hegelian contradiction and the prime numbers: Part 1 Dark Age Marxism 2018-11-24 | A talk given in Oxford Nov 2018 on a mathematical interpretation of Chapter 1 of Hegel's Science of Logic, in particular Hegel's concepts of being, nothing and becoming. For the transcript see: ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/2018/11/24/hegelian-contradiction-and-the-prime-numbers-part-1
Silicon valley startups: doing evil, again and again Dark Age Marxism 2018-11-24 | Audio of a talk given in Oxford, May 2018, on why venture capital and start-up culture reproduces exploitative economic relations and institutionalises theft on a global scale. More information at: ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/2018/03/31/silicon-valley-startups-being-evil-again-and-again
The general theory of labour value (part 1) Dark Age Marxism 2017-05-19 | A talk on the general theory of labour value. For more context see:ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/2017/05/19/just-what-is-a-labour-value-anyway
Venture Communism Dark Age Marxism 2015-12-01 | Audio of talk given in Oxford, Nov 2015, on Dmitri Kleiner's "Venture Communism". Venture Communism is an institutional proposal to replace venture capitalism with funding of start-ups that promote the collective ownership of property within a market economy of worker co-ops.The talk lasts for 25 mins, with a final 10 mins in response to an hour of debate (not included).
Material Foundations for Algorithmic Socialism Dark Age Marxism 2015-06-09 | An informal talk given to the CCS (http://communistcorrespondingsociety.org), June 2015, Oxford UK, on the technological possibilities for building socialist institutions.
Pasinettis hyper-integrated labour coefficients and the labour theory of value Dark Age Marxism 2014-11-10 | A constructive critique of Luigi Pasinetti's approach to the classical labour theory of value.
Loop-closing semantics Dark Age Marxism 2014-11-10 | A talk that extends Aaron Sloman's "loop-closing" theory of semantic content.
Sraffas incomplete reductions to labour Dark Age Marxism 2014-07-07 | A talk on Piero Sraffa's seminal "Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities", specifically his project of reconstructing classical economics, and how we need to critique and extend Sraffa's work to complete this reconstruction.
