Slashdot Mirror
Marx May Have Had a Point
Hitting the mainpage for the first time, Black Sabbath writes "While communism has been declared dead and buried (with a few stubborn exceptions), Karl Marx's diagnosis of capitalism's ills seem quite bang on the money. Harvard Business Review blogger Umair Haque lists where Marx may have been right."
It's a pretty good read once you get past the author's three paragraph disclaimer that he is not a communist. The MIT news also ran a short interview discussing the economic trends in August this morning.
Or, I'll buy your defense technology from you for the right price! It's a win-win!
Groucho, Harpo, Chico, or Zeppo
I think everyone knew that even Capitalism has its down sides, we just agreed that they were acceptable. Yeah, he may have been right, but it's nothing we didn't already know.
Actually, as the article shows, he had several. However, the people who most loudly proclaimed to be acting out "Marxist ideals" generally had no idea what his points were. One point that was crucial to Marxism - and not mentioned in the article - is that Marx was specifically laying out the communist manifesto for smaller countries (no larger than Germany or the UK) as he did not expect it to be applicable to larger countries like Russia or China.
While he never outwardly admitted it, he likely realized on some level that an idealistic approach such as his communism would not be able to stand up to the crushing weight of human want and corruption in a large country. Which is, of course, exactly what happened in Russia and China; neither of which ever accomplished true communism on a national scale.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day!
And it's been something economists, philosophers, politicians and, y'know, the actually wealthy have all been struggling with since capitalism was a thing. Wealth accumulates. That's what it does. Much has been said for and against the process (See Rawls, Nozick, et al.) by which this wealth is then redistributed. But in the end it really just boils down to Marx's depiction of haves and have-nots. It's just as true now as it was when he wrote Das Kapital.
What we have in the US is NOT capitalism or free market economics. Come on people -- we're talking about the most expensive, most powerful government in world history. Free market economics is dependent on the exact opposite: a government strictly limited in power and revenue.
What we have in the US is much closer to corporatism or even fascism.
Karl Marx's diagnosis of capitalism's ills seem quite bang on the money.
*squint*
I see what you did there...
Our culture doesn't get smarter, it just finds new ways of being retarded.
Have a look at what Marx wanted. He wanted to be able to farm in the morning, go hunting in the afternoon, exchange ideas and write papers in the evening or just do none of it as pleased his fancy with no looking ahead as to what was needful beyond the moment. He wasn't a communist, he was an anarchist.
Give me a good tyranny under someone who understands the responsibility he carries and realizes that as his subjects prosper so does he. Not these modern days idiots who suck their countries dry to provide them with luxury and entertainment.
Shelby.
In the United States: The abolition of slavery, taxation, social security, child labor laws, welfare, the interstate highway system, eminent domain, anti-trust laws (Sherman Act), minimum wage, the draft, the inability to sell your organs, pollution laws, laws against exploiting poor people, the list is endless really. We started out as a very Capitalist nation and have slowly migrated to a better middle ground with some Socialist programs and laws. Conversely, China started out fairly Socialist and everyday move toward more Capitalist tendencies. You can argue all day which is the better way but the truth is that 1) for every country it's different and 2) the best solution is always somewhere in between the spectrum of capitalism and socialism. So you can shut up about demanding "pure capitalism" and "truly free markets" just as well as you can stop branding someone a "socialist" for merely proposing or exploring or investigating movements toward the middle.
My work here is dung.
Has made both labor and capital obsolete. Capital has been defined as sufficient money to contract salaried labor. It other words, nothing but the force and ability to gather and organize labor, by paying for it. Technology substitutes a lot of the labor, and now, it's substituting the methods for gathering, organizing, and paying for the labor.
Capitalism died a long time ago, but (almost) nobody knows how to work any other way. Humanism remains an idea nobody has ever heard of.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Would you rather be poor in Marx's day or today? It seems to me that today's poor have it pretty good, considering.
You could also argue that a big part of the problem of late is people living beyond their means. A nice, but modest, suburban home like the one you grew up in is no longer acceptable. Now, you need a McMansion, and that drives the overextension and the debt. Just watch any of the "Real Housewives" shows.
In terms of immiseration, the problem isn't exploitation but globalization (and cheap transport and communications). Back in the day, you competed for wages largely with people in your own country. Now, you're competing with workers from around the world.
Yes he was right.
However he did not take into account the douchebag factor. The lazy bum who does not want to work. So you have to make him work. Then it becomes an authoritative society. Communism works until someone figures out they dont have to work as hard and can get the same amount of benefit out of it.
However we have a *HUGE* problem. Automation. Eventually everything will be automated, *EVERYTHING*. What then? Who works? There is no one needed to do work as machines do it all, even our thinking. Eventually when it is all automated what do we do?
But there needs to be some way to prevent capital from influencing politics, especially in a democracy. Our representatives are owned wholly by the people that give them the most money, and until we definitively block money from being a driving force in politics we will be ruled by the richest.
Barring direct financial contribution to political candidates and forcing them to run on equal funds would help. Barring the movement between high public office and private business, especially government contractors, would help as well. Good luck on any of this every coming to pass. Our elected representatives directly benefit off the system the way it is now, and as they're the only ones who can legally change it, we're pretty much effed...at least, until the general public breaks out the torches and pitchforks and goes all French Revolution on their asses.
Read "The Mass Psychology of Fascism" for a much better writeup.
William gibson in pattern recognition posited a modern russian joke... Everything lenin told us about communism was false, but everything he said about capitalism was true.
You got a mouse in your pocket, friend?
OK, now I am waiting for Slashdot because I type too fast. Since I type 100wpm or more, I am penalized by constnat "slow down, cowboy!" imprecations. Maybe slashdot could bother fucking counting how long the comment is before deciding I'm typing too fast.
Totally meta, unrelated, but since Slashdot forced me to sit here and wait, I decided to rant more.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Banks fail, then they are bailed out like socialism so you retroactively apply socialism to the reason they are a failure?
Bakunin saw that Marx was right in his analysis of capitol, but did not appreciate the dangers of the state either. He famously said "liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality". Marx accurately predicted the end state of Capitalism. Bakunin accurately predicted the end state of Marxism.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
But identifying a problem is not identical to finding the correct solution.
You couldn't be dumber with a lobotomy.
The true failing comes when you add in one key component that breaks it: people. Scholars have said otherwise, but I believe that human beings are ultimately very selfish, the most selfish of those being the exceedingly rich, who will do anything, even screw their best friends, to move just that one rung higher on the ladder.
Example? Look at Apple's recent behaviour. That's being driven by shareholders and the suits that now run the firm in Steve's place.
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
I have always thought that Marx was right in a lot about what he wrote about capitalism. The "Crisis of Realisation" may have been delayed by globalisation and the move of consumption into the corporate world, but we cannot continue growing the economy for ever. Where Marx falls down though is his assumption that once you get rid of capitalism you will naturally fall into a perfect society, with everyone consuming according to their needs and producing according to their abilities. Even without the repeated historical proofs that it won't happen I can't see why on earth he would even suggest such a thing. It is far more likely that Capitalism will pick itself up again very slowly with local trade or some totalitarian regime will take over.
Immiseration - A PC used to be $5000. Now it is much cheaper, even with inflation. This goes for other goods as well. Gini coefs. have been rising, but the pie as also been expanding instead of shrinking.
Crisis - "too little demand chasing too many disposable widgets" - i'd like an example of this. Disclaimer: I am a fan of these guys who don't have so much an "overproduction" theory as they do a "malinvestment" theory: http://mises.org
Stagnation - as tax rates go up, regulation gets more burdensome, government spending increases, money printing screws up the economy, and we have transfers of wealth to the unproductive rich and the unproductive poor, we will get stagnantion.
Alienation - mixed feelings about this one. Basically, Marx argues this is a problem. If we want to eliminate alienation, we need to restrict the ability to service one another. Also, jobs on the assembly line can be alienating, but programming jobs might not be so much.
False consciousness - Yeah, right. The people at Walmart are happy to work there rather than a better-paying job. They take the job because it's all they can get/the best they can currently get. People don't pay loyalty to employers like they used to, and in a quasi-capitalist system, I consider this a good thing.
Commodity fetishism - This is a problem I see everywhere. This is what happens when society as a whole embraces liberalism as an ethos and discards tradition.
Marx = brilliant analysis of what is wrong, horrible solution.
Speaking as a communist - in the sense that I think that property should be common, or already is, but we pretend (enforced) it is not. Marx goes wrong when he choses for a dictatorship (of the proles or whatever/whoever) to have the common property grabbed by a state.
The author's examples do not support his point. Over the time period where he shows that average workers incomes have stagnated is the same time period where the government has increasingly intervened in the market on the basis of socialistic principles. The examples the author gives of the "failures" of capitalism are the result of the government applying Marxian theory to "ease" the failings of capitalism. This does not mean that capitalism is perfect, no system involving humans, or designed by humans, will be.
This is a common argument I see: problem A is evidence that we need more government regulation, even though problem A was caused by bad government regulation in the first place. Problem B is evidence that Marx was right, even though problem B is the result of applying Marx's theories (usually partially).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
"card carrying communist!!"
Given that a suspicious looking brown guy whose political mentor in Chicago was a communist domestic terrorist has been elected President, I think you're safe Haque.
(Let the battle between "+1 Funny" and "-1 Troll" commence!)
Karl Marx was a philosopher in the tradition of the Hegelians, a Romantic and a materialist. If you evaluate his work in those terms it's very compelling, offers many interesting critiques of Adam Smith, Ricardo and the post-enlightenment economists, but it makes no testable hypotheses. He is very historicist, he makes claims about what WILL happen, but they're couched in such a way that there's always room for interpretation and he never says exactly WHEN something will happen.
It's all really brilliant but you can't base an entire state or political economy on it, it's very impractical. Of course you can say the same thing about Smith or Robert Nozick: philosophy is not a good foundation for government.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
I grew up hearing the same thing everyone else did: communism is evil and needs to be destroyed. (thank goodness I wasn't born in the 50s though) I figured there was something up but just kept my head down.
I took sociology during the summer and one thing really stood out. The text gave an (seemingly anyway) unbiased look at Marx's theories on society. I know why communism and socialism is so evil now. It's because the rich and powerful are afraid and terrified of poor people. If people ever stood up for themselves, the rich and powerful would be pulled down.
I know now also that all versions of communism right now are not really communism. They're usually dictatorships or oligarchies masquerading as communism. These people misunderstood (intentionally?) marx's ideas. The main problem is that you can't have socialism/communism until there's enough for everyone. There isn't enough yet. And selfishness still rules just about all human lives.
Anyway.. that's my take on things. Maybe there's a lot I'm missing, some of which I hope to pick up in other classes.
Oh... and I was constantly stunned by the amount of foresight Marx had.
"Capitalism is the worst form of economics ever invented, except for everything else that's ever been tried."
Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail which resulted in making the financial crisis much worst. It was a test of pure capitalism that failed.
The fundamental flaw in Communism is human nature. Humans are corrupted by money and power. True communism can never be free from that corruption no matter what the scale. ....
Then again, pure capitalism suffers that fatal flaw as well. The corruption of money and power allow capitalists to exploit people just the same.
But the real difference is in the scope to which corruption can effect you. Under communism power flows to a very small central group where corruption effects a whole nation. Under capitalism, you can have companies that exploit workers but if they do that too much workers are free to leave and start new companies that start afresh... at least you have that ability as long as regulations do not impose too heavy a burden to start a new company to compete.
Regardless though capitalism is a model where corruption is far more easily isolated and either worked around or purged. It's a system that is much more self-correcting in nature, which is why to paraphrase a famous quote, it's the worst system except for all the others.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Consider advancements in automation, robotics, AI, and networking... the world is increasingly becoming run by non-humans. The only impediments to our continued success are global natural disasters, climate change, disease, war, political and religious extremism... The means of production will be irrelevant, it's only the access to the raw materials, security, free flow of information, and goods and services that will determine our collective prosperity.
I think we have the technology to feed and house everyone on earth. we need a global technocracy like suggested by the people at The Venus Project.
any decent student of history would realize that the USSR (which was not a true communist state anyways) collapsed not primarily under the pressure of capitalism, but rather primarily under the weight of its own corruption and internal power struggles.
Any decent student of human nature would know that centralizing power to the degree that even the most mild form of communism attempts to do will be overrun by corruption and power struggles. That result was inevitable; it's built into the model. The only thing that works is decentralizing power and keeping it local so that corruption is close enough to people that have the possibility of rooting it out. That means local and small where possible.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Technology is at the heart of our current civilization. This is still News for Nerds is it not? Stuff that matters? Get a clue man.
Communism isn't necessarily a bad idea, but true communism relies on everyone buying into the idea, not a strong arm dictatorship forcing it to work. It is built around the idea of everyone sharing what they have or skills they have voluntarily for the benefit of others. Star Trek was actually quite communistic when you think about it - everyone worked together for the benefit of the whole. Star Wars was similar, but the rebels all had a buy in (defeat the evil dictator). The revisited Battlestar Galactica was pretty much just the opposite of both of those.
The only successful "communists" I know of are communal Mennonites and Amish. Their buy in is religion, and they've managed to successfully keep their communes in capitalist countries, though not without some hiccups - there's a reason many of them fled the US for Canada during the first World War - religious persecution in the US (like tossing 4 kids into Leavenworth prison for being conscientious objectors and killing 3 of them).
I like the ideals of Communism, but the reality is we can't even keep marriages together, and getting an entire country to work together like that is like keeping a big marriage together. It looks nice on paper, but since there is no buy in except a promise, the only way to make it work is to force it with a strong dictatorship - in marriage terms, you need an abusive husband to beat his wife and children into being completely submissive, with the husband being the dictator and the wife and children being his people.
There are a few well established and rather different definitions of the term. Marx used it in a way that is not like those in the anarcho-capitalist and/or Austrian economic school would define it.
If you don't agree on semantics saying he was correct is meaningless since not everyone are speaking about the same thing.
No.
Banks failing isn't the problem.
Socialism was being presented as the reason for the systemic failure of the economy as a whole, not of indiviudal bank failures.
Instead of what you would have with capitilism: owners and investors in the banks that fail lose their money, rest of the economy doesn't give a shit. You get the entire economy failing because badly managed banks are propped up and given an ever increasing proportion of the economy's working capital.
Now it wasn't "socialism" that is the sole cause of this mess. Nor was is "capitalism". Under actual socialism it wouldn't have happened. Under actual capitlism is wouldn't have happened. However, taking the worst parts of each and combining them produced pretty much exactly what you would expect.
Communism, nor socialism did not exist in the USSR. The USSR was a state capitalist country where a wealthy elite controlled and owned all resources. Communism is a stateless society where there is no elite at all and no central planning or authority. Socialism is a system where there is a democratic system whereby the people elect those who will make economic decisions and everyone has an equal voice in economic issues.
The Economy of the USSR is actually pretty similar to that of the USA, with a wealthy, powerful elite that controls all of the resources (capitalism). There is very little difference between state capitalism and corporate capitalism, both lead to massive consolidation of wealth and capital. In the US, the corporations maintain their dominance by controlling resources and capital people depend on, and controlling markets, this is maintained by factors such as size advantages, economy of scale, and other monopolistic-oligarchistic practices. The Corporations also have their own security forces which could even protect and assert their control over these resources. The only limit on corporate, unelected power is a democratic government, corporations would vastly expand their power in the case that democratic government is weakened or abolished, and that is the goal of the Republican party, to overthrow democratic government in the US and usher in the Corporations as absolute unelected economic royalty.
Communism as i said is a stateless, anarchic system. It is the opposite of corporate capitalism or state capitalistm found in the USSR, or today in North Korea. I do not sure Communism would work as, while most people are really wonderful, eventually an evil few would try to consolidate resources and begin to build up aggregations of resources, along with a security force to maintain such control, these things usually lead to the formation of a absolute monarchy. Free market mom and pop type capitalism in absense of a democratic government is almost exactly the same as communism, and would fail for the same reason that communism can often fail, that out of the decentralisation some evil individuals will try to decentralise and consolidate power.
A democratic state is necessary to guard against the antidemocratic consolidation of power by such evil, power hungry people. Democratic states rarely form spontaneously, the trend in centralisation by a want-to-be elite is to get power and keep it. Creating a democratic state by filling the power void can pre-empt the formation of monarchies however. And the more democratic government is weakened, the more the non democratic capitalist systems will take its place. In the US today, we have an already established anti democratic agalmation of power and the more the democratic government is weakened, the more of democracy itself that we lose as the corporations become even less regulated and their powers become more boundless.
Marx was properly correct in his diagnosis of the problems of capitalism, in that it is utterly repressive and seeks to exploit common workers to enrich an elite. Capitalism also seeks to manipulate or totally destroy democratic government, as democratic government limits corporate power, eliminating democratic government would infinite expand corporate power and turn corporations into economic monarchies. We have the fact that is the fact that capitalism is an emerging economic monarchy that often fights a war with or totally defeats or pre-empts formation of democratic states. Despite what people in the US believe, our capitalist system is not associated with democracy, it is a anti-democratic system where a few control many via vast control of resources. Power corrupts people and therefore it is wise through democracy to distribute power authority, both politically and economically, this means higher income taxes on the wealthy and limits to resource ownership that assures resource and income distribution are more equal.
Marx however, was overly optimistic and believed that capitaists could be easily defeated o
Let's assume for a second Marx was correct in his analysis of the problems capitalism has (his negative critique). That has no bearing on the absolute failure of his proposed solutions.
And before anyone tries to suggest that Communist governments weren't sufficiently communist, Marx laid out how there was going to be a transitory state-controlled period before everyone did everything voluntarily. And that voluntary bit... you'll never get 100% commitment. It's unworkable without state totalitarianism.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Most modern economies are a mix between socialism (healthcare and caring for the elderly, weak and poor) and capitalism (independence and freedom). Communism (independence-void) is an extreme form of socialism and corporationalism (care-void) an extreme form of capitalism. It took me a while to see that the current shift to corporationalism is breaking our freedoms more than we want to see - and still... we just shake our heads about "the brainwashing methods of communism" when reading articles as above. For that reason always vote for "extreme middle" to get a real stable system (referring to Van Kooten en De Bie, but very serious about it).
Marx was right? Unless you specify about what, that's an empty statement, meaning nothing.
He made a lot of statements and drew lots of conclusions. Even diehard antiCommunists have always agreed that he got SOME things right - in fact, his insight of looking at societies from the perspective of economic strata was brilliant. Nobody's argued that, I believe.
But his ultimate assertion that societies would evolve inexorably toward a communist utopia remains absurd.
-Styopa
Now before you brow beat me, go take a poll. Ask everyone you run into today whether Communism is an economic policy, or a political ideology. You might be surprised at what the split is.
That being said, YES, communism was beaten by Capitalism. EVERYONE knows this. However, take a good long look at the past 15 years of the US economy. We were at a pinnacle in US history economically, yet here we are today lingering on the cliff, staving off a major recession. How exactly did this happen? Capitalism.
You can argue about regulation, de-regulation, bank bailouts, and tax law all you want. The simple fact through all of this is, there is a time to have greed in the market. There is a time when greed and thirst for profit ignites a market, creating prosperity in society. However, that time is not now. You can call it Bull and Bear or aggressive and stagnant growth, but greed, at this point in time, is not the answer to America's economic woes.
And why is that exactly? Fund Managers and Stock Brokers take a good share of the blame on this one since they suffer from pre-mature ejaculation, but the FED, SEC, banks and Congress are really to blame in all this. They're the ones with the keys to the cabinet, not the lowly cubicle worker making mortgage payments, or family of 4 in suburbia with 2 working parents. Yes, there is a lot of blame to go around, but look where we're at in all this. Look at how much wealth, in the US and abroad, up and vanished. Over-inflated some of it may have been, but I don't wish this scenario upon anyone ever.
I won't give reasons for why we need regulation this, or higher taxes here, or restriction for off-shore accounts. Policy is a political mechanism, and when Wall Street is involved, an order of magnitude more dangerous. But, for you die hard Capitalists out there, who think there can be no wrong, I task you with listening to this story from NPR. Yes, it's NPR, but it isn't about America so your feelings shouldn't be hurt. It's worth a listen for the mere fact that, in the end, it debunks every intuitive Capitalist position one would take, and comes out ahead despite a near global economic collapse.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/09/06/140110346/how-to-avoid-the-oil-curse
So someone who makes $20 an hour now competes with someone in China who makes $20 a day. What is the solution? Bring down the standard of living in the west to that of the Chinese? Or bring the standard of living of the Chinese closer to their western equivalent? Which solution involves less violence? The solution seems straight forward until one considers that the Chinese system of governance has inherent flaws that are going to become more apparent. The economics on both sides of the issue are rigged by their requisite governments. Will there be leadership on both sides with the wisdom to see this through, or will it only result in conflict?
Very few economists of any ideological persuasion do not have respect for Marx's critic of Capitalism. It was his analysis of capitalism that earned him the professional status to propose an alternative system.
Further, very few would say that capitalism is perfect. Rather, it has a million and one problems. We stick with capitalism because it's problems are mostly small problems and there are lots of compensating advantages. Has the distinction between rich and poor increased in the last 40 years? Yes, but there are reasons for that other then shadowy conspiracies full of fat men with cigars. Issues of labor efficiency, market competition, skill depreciation, etc.
Skills that once could buy a house and raise a family are today worth less then McDonalds fry cook skills. That isn't entirely capitalism's fault. Blame innovations in manufacturing and labor competition from asia if you like but that's a pressure that would exist even if we were communists. If we instituted protectionist practices it wouldn't change our international competitiveness so much insulate uncompetitive practices within our domestic market.
Socialism and communism can't fight the future. We could impose these system with a gentle touch or an iron fist and neither system would allow a small town vacuum cleaner salesman to buy a house and raise a family doing door to door sales. In the 1950s that might have been possible due to certain things being a great deal cheaper and other things being a great deal more expensive. But market conditions have changed and that sort of labor simply isn't going to pay the bills.
I won't pretend to have all the answers... I know I don't. I'm just saying that just because Marx spotted some problems with capitalism doesn't mean he actually had practical solutions to those problems.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
As much as I detest the uber-wealthy kunts that run the world, I have to agree with Reverend Billy Gibbons when he says: "it's the root of evil and you know the rest, but it's way ahead of whats second best".
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
I find it curious that because someone is right about some things, people assume he was right about everything, while others say that because he was wrong about some things, he was wrong about everything.
Of course Marx had some real insights. He would not have had any following at all if he had not. But, as is often the case, seen what is wrong with the current system does not meaning knowing how to fix it. His insights into the problems of 19th century capitalism were true. But his plan for fixing them simply doesn't work. True communism, as Marx planned it, simply cannot work in a world in which people are even a little selfish. Soviet Communism was not Marxist communism - it merely claimed to be; it was corrupted by normal human self interest to the point where its claims to Marxism were completely token.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
And of course you have iron clad proof that bailing our Lehman Brothers would have made things better?
You have a time machine/parallel universe or something I take it?
Oh and by the way the worst of "the financial crisis" hasn't happened yet, that can has been kicked down the road some more.
Capitalism certainly has lots of problems. But I think Marx looked at the wrong things. He should have asked, what has made capitalism work as well as it has so far?
There are two things that I think make capitalism work as well as it has.
Now it's clear that Capitalism doesn't always work this way; there are lots of times when there's a lack of diversity or feedback for some reason; people are rewarded for destroying value, or not rewarded for the value they create.
But in communism, as it has thus far been practiced, neither of these things are ever true. The State makes has a committee and makes one decision, and that policy is implemented nation-wide. Moreover, often it's taken as gospel truth, and it's heresy to even question it. Furthermore, when officials make decisions, there is almost guaranteed never to be the same degree of feedback, either good or bad.
So Marx saw what didn't work well, and tried to change it; but he didn't see what *did* work well, and try to keep it. On the contrary, he took away what worked well.
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.
``The World Isn't Fair'' by Randy Newman
When Karl Marx was a boy
he took a hard look around
He saw people were starving all over the place
while others were painting the town
The public spirited boy
became a public spirited man
So he worked very hard and he read everything
until he came up with a plan
There'll be no exploitation
of the worker or his kin
No discrimination 'cause of the color of your
skin
No more private property
It would not be allowed
No one could rise too high
No one could sink too low
or go under completely like some we all know
If Marx were living today
he'd be rolling around in his grave
And if I had him here in my mansion on the hill
I'd tell him a story t'would give his old heart
a chill
It's something that happened to me
I'd say, Karl I recently stumbled
into a new family
with two little children in school
where all little children should be
I went to the orientation
All the young mommies were there
Karl, you never have seen such a glorious sight
as these beautiful women arrayed for the night
just like countesses, empresses, movie stars and
queens
And they'd come there with men much like me
Froggish men, unpleasant to see
Were you to kiss one, Karl
Nary a prince would there be
Oh Karl the world isn't fair
It isn't and never will be
They tried out your plan
It brought misery instead
If you'd seen how they worked it
you'd be glad you were dead
just like I'm glad I'm living in the land of the
free
where the rich just get richer
and the poor you don't ever have to see
It would depress us, Karl
Because we care
that the world still isn't fair
--John Kenneth Galbraith
Capitalism is really the "Least Dirty Shirt", mostly because it better acknowledges human behavior I think. Marxism and the Communist ideals that follow from it are actually quite egalitarian; they express the view that everybody should help each other and share equally in the profits from doing so. But like Capitalism, the implementations of the Marxist ideals always are flawed. The reason Capitalism tends to come out ahead in the end is that it provides people with a better incentive to work than just benefiting society as a whole. Work provides personal gain, and the benefit to society is kind of a side-effect. This leads to all the issues mentioned in the article, but still tends to perform better because the net productivity of the capitalist society is higher.
I struggle to think how anyone could have thought up worse examples to undermine their own point, no matter how hard they tried. The turnover at McDonalds and Wal-Mart is amazing, and the very idea that these workers are happy and don't feel like exploited disposable cogs is laughable. Seriously, these two companies may be the very very worst to use as examples, in all the history of humanity, to make an argument for some kind of Stockholm Syndrome.
The dude needs to rewrite that paragraph to avoid distracting readers from his point, with that glaring over-the-top WTF. I almost wonder if he put that into his article as an "are you really reading?" joke or test.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Marx's crazy ideas are only palatable to the ignorant and wishful-thinking because he got the diagnosis so spot on. The problem is that his solution is completely unworkable—much, much worse than the condition. His ultimate contribution is a resounding indictment with no real solutions offered. So nothing gained.
At a personal finance level in capitalism, you do not waste what you have. The state isn't giving you two jars of pickled yak's feet which you just throw in the trash. When you buy groceries in capitalism, you try not to waste them.
But to me, Communism has the allure that women would not be raised to pursue the man with the biggest wallet. Sure their common capitalistic dad means well,"Don't fall in love with a bum who can't support you", but there are plenty of guys who are really cool, and well educated, that can't find a job in today's economy.
In communism it is well known the state controls the industry. But we're seeing in capitalistic countries, the industry is influencing the state.
I have no problem with the super rich. I think a lot of potential good can be done by them to help feed the poor. And if they don't spend their money, well, they die and it goes to someone else. I just have a problem with the super poor. The super poor cannot even sustain themselves. They need like 0.33 a day to get food and water, but they don't even have that much. I think it should be our generation's goal to help the poor as soon as we get on our feet. People are literally dying because of lack of proper wealth distribution. Even if governments don't sort it out, we can make it our own personal mission to donate to causes that help the situation.
God spoke to me
Hegel's dialectics and class struggles are a framework for interpreting PAST history. However these were descriptive, not predictive, i.e. not quite science. Wishful thinkers who declared socialism or liberal democracies were the NEXT BEST THING seemed to overshot the part. Perhaps a century from now the authoritarian capitalism of east Asia may turn out to be the winner. Then it may have its heyday and be supplanted by some else.
While Capitalism has many flaws perhaps it can be likened to Democracy as in:
"Democracy is the least worst form of Government" - Winston Churchill
Perhaps Capitalism is the "least worst form" of Economic Systems?
This was scheduled to be a dupe, but the new management decided to go another route...
I bet I could find a link on moveon or Democratic underground that proves he is a fascist.
Capitalism rewards effort and initiative. Communism does not. Human nature is to desire to be rewarded for effort and that has been the downfall of communism. In a capitalist economy, if you have an idea that is useful for society you can get funds, implement it, and perhaps make money. No so in a communist economy where a rigid structure in a necessity to ensure that plans are implemented. If you want to spend your days browsing the internet and playing video games, you will go hungry in a capitalist economy, though, while you might be fine in a communist economy, as long as you do your quota.
How is abolition of slavery less capitalistic? These people aren't selling their services, they were being coerced into indefinite servitude. It's about as far away from a free market at physically possible.
Simple, in a purely capitalistic system you can buy and sell anything, even people. If you can find people who have no rights in the country in question, why can't you sell them and do whatever the hell you want with them? The removal of a class system consisting of slaves (actually observing that every man is born and created equal) is socialistic by definition and anti-capitalistic in that it restricts your rights to trade in human lives (note, I said human not citizen).
The flaws in Marxism were all figured out in the 1920s. Here, let me explain:
If you have goods that are directly consumable like bread or cheese you can divide them up among people evenly. That works. What doesn't work and is essentially an NP hard problem without money is how goods that are used to make other goods are used. Let's take an example of a freight railroad. What do you ship on the railroad? Shoes, fuel, tiny sub-assemblies of combine harvesters? If you have a piece of construction equipment, what do you build with it? A school, a factory, a playground, a road? In a modern economy all this creates an astonishing amount of complexity that is intractable from a central planning point of view.
How does this work in a capitalist system? Simple : Prices. The price of everything determines what the railroad ships, what the construction equipment builds, etc. In a complex investment decision, such as where to build a factory and what to produce in it, the managers use estimations based on prices of the factors of production and how much they can get for the goods produced to determine whether to build a factory, and where to build it. Prices are a distributed highly multi-threaded information system that tells people what is scarce and what is plentiful from moment to moment and thus directs production.
Prices are somewhat distorted by bank credit money creation and the associated credit cycles, which is what causes the booms and busts in capitalism. That can be fixed, but that's a topic for another day.
The history of the Soviet Union is full of massive planning errors. They built many towns in the middle of Siberia that they abandoned once the Soviet Union fell because the production output was minimal, they cost an enormous amount to heat and deliver supplies to and nobody wanted to live there. They didn't know this until they knew the real prices for running these cities. No communist government, except for the psychopathic regieme of Pol Pot ever dared to completely get rid of money, and even he admitted it was his biggest mistake!
If you want to dig into the theory of the planning problem in capitalism, I'd recommend Mises "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth"
http://mises.org/resources.aspx?Id=71e20725-ee72-4adb-ade2-34dfdabf7755
Banks failing isn't the problem.
Actually firms failing, such as Lehman, is the problem because in a modern economy these financial institutions are all deeply interconnected. When one fails, it brings down the others like a house of cards.
So the usual naive pure free market booster solution of "just let it fail" only "works" if by "works" you mean the entire global financial system ceases to function and we are reduced to barter. Kind of a productivity and wealth killer though.
The problem is that most socialists are capitalists. Just look at our politicians on the Left (and Right but we are talking about the Left now). They hand out sweet contracts to the large corporations who give them campaign donations. GE buys NBC/MSNBC both of which have a decidedly leftward slant and plug the Democrats every chance they get. How much money has GE received through Obama's "Green Energy Program"? TONS... Despite the fact that the windmills etc. GE is building in China. How about the United Auto Worker's Union? Our politicians use public funds to buy a significant share of GM. After holding the stocks for a few months, the stocks are handed over to the United Auto Workers Union to "give it to the people". The UAW then proceeds to sell its stake in GM a portion of which will go back to supporting the politicians who gave them the stocks. The list goes on and on. With socialism, you simply have capitalism WITHIN the government instead of OUTSIDE the government. The difference is, if you do not like what a company is doing, you do not have to work with them or buy their products. If you do not like what the government is doing, too bad. If you don't give them your money, you are going to go to jail. If you refuse, the SWAT team will visit your house shortly.
Fundamentally, there is nothing wrong about collectivism. Most "real" people call it sharing / caring for one another. However, beware of politicians and those who say that they must enforce sharing for our own good and that they must use force to ensure that we share. In the end, they are looking out for themselves and not for others. I would invite those on the Left to set up their own collectivist society via contract (not by law). There is nothing stopping you. It has been done many times before such as with the Jewish Kibbuz's. If your system works, I'll join voluntarily and I'll do everything I can do make it successful. But don't _force_ ME to participate in your system. There is no hope for a system that will not work with the voluntary participation of its members to work by including those - through force - who do not want to participate. If you force me and those like me, we will do everything we can do to bring down your system around your ears.
I'd go back a few years further to LBJ removing silver from American coinage, a key event in the ongoing destruction of the dollar. The 1965 minimum wage paid in 1965 90% silver dollar coins would be worth around $30/hour in today's fiat money. FDR confiscating gold and devaluing the dollar was bad but not catastrophic. Woodrow Wilson's creation of the Federal Reserve enabled the later mischief. The rot had set in when Nixon officially took us off the gold standard and engaged in assorted other economic stupidity. Of all these events, LBJ's economic manipulation to cover the expense of his welfare/warfare state was the worst in my opinion.
Throw in the dividend double-tax that discourages dividend payments that help keep public companies honest (accountants can fake many things but not cash payments), the massive leverage generated by Wall Street banks (derivatives, options, CDOs, etc) that enables all sorts of heads-we-win/tails-you-lose mischief, the federal government encouraging real estate asset bubbles (Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, mortgage interest deduction, CRA, etc), and you come to realize that this hasn't been a capitalist nation in a very long time.
Austrian school economists have been warning the world of the dangers of the Keynesian economics practiced by "mainstream" economists for generations now. It looks like we're heading for the "crack-up boom" they predicted, with the Obama Administration accelerating the end-game dramatically. What's fascinating is that Marx understood the danger of undermining currencies as well.
Anyhow, if you want to steal wealth from the average family there's no surer way than printing lots of new currency, which dilutes the value of existing currency, and handing that new currency to your buddies on Wall Street (Goldman Sachs/etc) and politically connected corporate socialists. Talk of manipulating the income tax is laughable misdirection in comparison to this.
COMMUNISM IS A DISEASE
As Lysander Spooner details in his essay, "No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority", contracts reached between individuals have no legitimate authority over other individuals. The practical conundrum this presents libertarians is rarely dealt with head-on.
Newt Gingrich's evocatively titled "Contract With America" struck a seductive chord with conservatives precisely because it seemed to present a proposal for a contract between Americans -- between individuals called "Americans" -- thereby establishing its legitimacy.
A far more powerful political force can sweep libertarians to victory if only they would ask themselves the following question:
"What would a natural individually sovereign American, in debt-free possession of his house, tools, land and weapons sufficient to defend and support his wife and raise his children to maturity, agree to if approached with 'a contract between Americans'?"
Answer that question honestly and libertarians will be on the road to victory. One thing is for certain: It is dishonest to claim that an individual sovereign, in a state of nature, would agree to respect the property rights agreed to by others if he, himself, were deprived of any land with which to support a wife and have a family. Yet that seems to be the contract offered by many so-called "libertarians" to the general public and the general public rightly rejects the transparently illegitimate proposal as placing the sanctity of property above the sanctity of life. Not only is this a loser's political strategy -- it is in naked violation of natural law. To win, libertarians must be more honest with themselves and others as to the natural interests of individual sovereigns.
I propose the following Contract Between Americans as the political platform that can, particularly in the present circumstances, sweep deep libertarian principles to political victory in the near term:
* Treat pollution as a criminal assault on the nation.
Pollution harms the national territory. Individuals that harm private property may be held criminally liable under some circumstances but if there is no intent to harm, it is usually up to civil courts to award monetary damages. Individuals that harm the national territory, however, must be held to a higher standard of discipline due to the greater harm. Mere tort law is insufficient as a remedy when what is at stake is the national ecology. If the choice is made to reduce regulation of private behavior because such regulations, although they prevent damage and are therefore quite economical, impinge on freedom, then those enjoying said freedom must, when abusing that freedom, suffer consequences sufficiently severe to serve as an effective self-regulating motive.
* Household bankruptcy protection is the median price of a home plus median capitalization of a job.
The origin of bankruptcy law is the recognition that a man’s homestead is as sacrosanct as his body since it is the means by which he sustains his body. A homestead entails not only a primary residence real estate holding but also the source of his other necessities. Hence personal bankruptcy protects “home and tools of the trade” from confiscation. Only a society that accepts slavery can accept confiscation of a man’s body for the use of others.
* Anyone or anything (including the government) can place money in escrow as a bid for any property right recognized by law, thereby establishing an in-place liquidation value for that property right.
Money differs from other property rights in terms of its liquidity—that is, its availability for trade upon demand. When money is “tied up in investments” that is simply another way of saying that the owner of the property right sees more value in the property right than do others with money ready to buy that property right. The more people who perceive a particular level of value in a property right, the more force must be brought to bear to protect it
you people will argue about anything.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Bailing out Lehman brothers would allow the market for mortgage backed securities to remain liquid and not cause other banks to fail as a result. I don't have a time machine, so of course I can't have iron clad proof on how results will be different, but I can assume it wouldn't make things worst.
The point is that having the majority of major banks fail would be catastrophic for the economy. Imagine if Americans suddenly lose all their savings accounts as a result and can't get a loan for anything.
Please mount for critiques of capitalism in terms that don't also apply to personal liberty.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
I thought that was Leninism. Or was it Stalinism? SO confusing, so many tyrants to blame...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I think it's quite evident that pure capitalism doesn't work. As with anything humans do eventually some will find a way to exploit the system. Hence all the laws, regulations and social programs implemented in every capitalist nation. Sure, on paper a totally libertarian form of capitalism could work. But then, on paper communism would work too.
The problem with communism, which is why it will always fail, is that it doesn't account for human nature. Humans, like all of nature, are competitive. Humans need to be rewarded for their endeavors. It would be nice if people engaged in something productive for purely philanthropic reasons, but that's just not how the world works. Capitalism at least accounts for that and ideally channels it into something productive. But regulation is essential to minimize abuses and account for exceptions to the rule.
The basic fact is that more people have prospered under capitalism than other any other system in the history of humanity. Who can look at the developed world and not agree that people are enjoying an extremely comfortable existence? Of course, the better off people are, the lower their threshold for pain becomes. I can't count the times I've encountered people, decked out with designer clothing and equipped with the latest gadgets, whining about how unfortunate they are, how the man is constantly oppressing them.
A friend once made an interesting observation: communism works at the familial level. This is something I've observed time and time again. Families who pool resources and help each other tend to be more successful. This is one of the reasons, although certainly not the only one, why so Chinese thrive in the US. In a lot of other cultures, especially amongst Americans, there's more of an attitude of every man for himself. Either that or children, those in their 20s and up, merely leech of their parents and don't really contribute to the family. On a larger level, capitalism takes over. And the fact is that Chinese are extremely capitalist. Communism in China is there mostly to ensure social order. The Chinese economy only began to thrive once capitalist ideals were permitted and they even went as far to allow privatization of some formerly government-run businesses.
Another very important thing is that in Asia people value education highly. People tend to have a strong work ethic. Welfare programs are based around employing people, not handing out money. So they aren't perpetuating a culture of dependency. Socialism is great, as long as citizens are consistently paying into it and only taking advantage of it as a last resort.
The problem in the West is that there's this expectation that the government is going to be there for every little problem. And even worse, there exists this expectation that the government can guarantee jobs and countless generous benefits. Look at Greece where the majority of the citizens are employed by the government. How did anyone believe that was sustainable? It's like an attempt perpetual motion machine. But the people have become so dependent on the government that they refuse to accept needed change.
Not that things are anything close to perfect in the developed nations of Asia, but I think they've struck a far better balance than the United States and most of Europe. But as I've mentioned, I think much of Asia's success is due to the attitude of the people.
So What? Capitalism is the only way a man can fend for himself on his own terms. i don't want to co-own anything, if i start a business i want to own the whole thing, or what's the point? get your Ayn Rand out and give it a read about selfishness, start with atlas and figurehead, you might get the point. man should be left to do and create as he sees fit, fail or no. everything else is just a form of altruism which in itself is destructive. Productivity goes down in any collective as the incentive is diminished. look at soviet russia as a good example, everybody stopped innovating as their was no ownership.
I find it sad that this kind of post makes it on the once venerable Slashdot. Like the remaining communist countries in the world, this forum is in decline.
He had a point, alright. On top of his head!
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Americans are insured by the FDIC (upto $500K), and there's lots of small banks and credit unions which could take up the slack.
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" - Winston Churchill
I am always amazed by the extent to which humans believe they are immune from the problems that the rest of the animal kingdom has to deal with, or else from the mechanisms used to solve those problems on account of our civilization.
'But Aquitaine,' you say, 'Isn't the whole point of civilization that we can rise above barbaric, survival-of-the-fittest brutality?'
Sure -- some of the time. But that doesn't change what we are or what we're doing on this planet, which is trying to survive a competition for limited resources with a minimum of suffering. Capitalism is a system that rewards many of the same traits that nature would reward you for -- innovation, wits, cleverness, but also deception. Government and civilization are the means through which we try to 'level the playing field,' either by creating artificial advantages for those who may need them, or else by removing advantages from those who have them. To a certain extent this is the very definition of 'humane,' but it can also be quite smart. One needn't look far to find a second- or third-generation heiress (or heir) to a fortune who is dumb as a post and won't amount to anything other than a flashy headline when they OD in their Manhattan loft one day. Similarly, there are plenty of smart, hardworking people out there who simply run into terrible luck, and for whom the cost of rescuing them is far less than the loss of value or production if you didn't. Technically, these are not 'pure capitalist' notions, but as the WSJ points out in an article just today -- 'pure' conservatism is pretty much a myth (subscription required) -- The net returns for some artificial control of free markets, both in measurable dollars and in harder-to-measure human life and happiness, are pretty much indisputable, and even Adam Smith and Madison knew that.
The difficulty arises when you establish an entity whose purpose is to design these controls and whose reward is commensurate with the greatest number of people advantaged in the short-term rather than the soundness of the control. Here you have two very easy examples: the private sector, when shareholders influence corporate decision-making for short-term reward without regard for long-term competition (or the environment, or any number of other long-term considerations), and the government, where Nancy Pelosi's reward has everything to do with the number of people she can 'cover' with government insurance and hardly anything to do with whether the mechanism she uses to cover them will put the country on an express train to where Greece and Portugal are hanging out right now.
This is not a weakness in either capitalism or communism; it's simple self-interest achieved via rhetoric and populism, and if the private sector is any more immune to it than the public sector, it's because the private sector has a built-in cycle of institutional death and birth occurring on a more regular basis than does government. If a big company starts doing dumb things, three medium-sized companies will (eventually, usually) step in because they did smart things. This is much harder in government, and the more necessity for it that there is, the more reactionary the movement that might ultimately achieve it will be, typically to everybody's detriment (see also: the guillotine).
So it gets a little tiring trying to reduce everything in politics to capitalism versus communism (or capitalism versus socialism); that war is over. There is no modern industrial society whose prosperity is not tied to a capitalist base, even if that base is then overwhelmingly restrained and regulated by a powerful government; statism is not mutually exclusive with capitalism -- it just redirects the output more artificially and less efficiently than the market would. Some of the time and in some ways, that's just what you want, because you're 'buying civilization' with it. Do it too much, and you're stifling the natural engin
Pick an '-ism'; the same applies. I don't think human nature can be blamed; the whole point 'theory' is to account for human nature.
Marx ( Smith, Malthus, Mill, Keynes, ...) didn't write about organizing mice or chickens. That they grossly misunderstood the core of their subject, people, demonstrates how trivial their philosophies were. Without people, it is just a novel mathematical model.
All economic systems end up in the plight of the modern farmer: How long you remain a farmer depends upon how much money you started with.
I have wrestled this very point and come up with my solution..and that is to change the perspective of happiness from more money is happiness to basically less money is happiness. Yes, you have to have a minimal amount to pay bills and such..but the actual amount of money you really **need** is less than $1000 a month. If you buy a piece of land and pay it off, it comes down to around $600 a month. The keys are to get small, dump debt, and learn to find joy in the world around you, not in the next mass-media toy shoveled in your face. As you de-leverage your debt and need for money, you opt out of inflated taxes, you lessen your slavery to job markets and you free yourself to find happiness in the real world. Money is one of the few non-aggressive ways that we can be enslaved voluntarily. I have come to understand that money above basic needs is a bad thing. I know its a difficult paradigm to grasp and I should probably put on my flame suit.. but.. I am doing this right now and the freedom is intoxicating.
In reality, the "communism" of the world isn't/wasn't true communism. True communism is a philosphy WILLINGLY adopted by THE MAJORITY (and, eventually, totality) of a given society. In the numerous (failed) implementations of Communism, the ideology has been a thin veil for the authoritarian regime that simply wanted an excuse to assume power.
Communism, true communism, isn't a bad thing in and of itself. The problem is that others used its promises to seduce the masses for their own ends. Had it been implemented true to the original philosophy, there wouldn't have been a need for a repressive system to be in place because EVERYONE would have willingly embraced the philosophy.
However, given the overall maturity of humanity as a whole, it's also a philosophy that is doomed to fail because we're not yet "advanced" enough in our thinking to WILLINGLY embrace the principles needed for a successful *TRUE* communist state to be constructed. We're still covetous, fearful, greedy, petty, and envious - no matter how much we deny it. Those are qualities that conspire against us building a better society. The politicians know this full well and are masters at exploiting those 5 negative emotions for their own ends (much the same way the communist "leaders" of yore did, with their respective peoples). That's what I mean by "advanced" - until we overcome those shortcomings, we will be unable to aspire to a better system of government.
Hence why communism is often referred to as a Utopia. The problem in the US is that "communism" == "authoritarianism" == "anti-american", and no consideration is paid to the truth of the philosophy - only to the failed dictatorships of old.
Some, for instance, rest on the idea of "overproduction." There is no such thing. Demand is unlimited, not supply. If an entrepreneur produces "too much" of a commodity, he simply has to lower prices until he can sell his supply. If that makes him go bankrupt, he was misallocating resources (according to the preferences of consumers, as demonstrated by their willingness or unwillingness to pay what he asked). But a socialist system lacks a price mechanism to self regulate. So some people have the privilege of shooting other people to make them act as they want. See Ludwig Von Mises, Socialism and Mises, Human Action.
At least if we let them all fail we could try rebuilding something that works. Of course in another few decades everyone will have forgotten so it'll happen again, but it'd be fun to do.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
World renown philosopher who wrote many well received books on his thoughts, changed whole countries and inspired uncounted multitudes, MAY have had a point? Here we are staring at the very brink of capitalism collapsing and I am guessing that he is laughing in his grave.
Sure communism has not worked out in the end, which I believe is a failing of humanity not the ideal, however it is completely condescending to sum up in such a title.
So nice that Marx got a few details right. Shame about failing to predict the gulags and death camps that emerged from attempts to implement his model.
Luther was right about a lot of things and his "protest" might even be just (and mainly in the times he lived); nonetheless, dividing a house was never a great idea. If the Church has problems, it would be better to fix them than to do a schism (of course, that is cheap talking now, maybe the only way to fix it _was_ doing a schism -- I'm not capable enough to analyze this).
Now, back to Marx: he may be right about a lot of things, and I agree about somer of his observations. Nonetheless, the solutions proposed suck, as the author puts it better than me in: "and while Marx's prescriptions were poor, perhaps, if we're prepared to think subtly, it's worthwhile separating his diagnoses from them."
But I'm saying Marx' vision, and also ours, are not quite accurate. There are folks eager to jump and defend Capitalism as a pet philosophy, instead of making it evolve. In that regard, the communists are ahead of the capitalists, because theyve seen Communism does not work (nor Socialism) and are trying to search for a better model.
We should also incorporate newer ideas to capitalism -- for instance that open source thing
It always come to my mind that quote in Star Trek (by Picard?) telling recently unfrozen twentieth century citizens that the idea in the future about economy is quite different. It was like explaining to a mercantilist that we do things differently now...
This article is ridiculous. Yes, he had some good points. He'd have to be absolutely rambling crazy to have NO good points. Much like Nostradamus, only small fractions of his work are ever analyzed at once, and those small fractions are then held to have some significant meaning, which isn't necessarily clear.
The first point this guy makes is terrible... ... real wages would fall, and working conditions would deteriorate."
Immiseration: "Marx claimed that
The article completely ignores the "working conditions would deteriorate" segment of that, and I don't think anyone would say working conditions have deteriorated. If they did, they'd be an idiot. Okay, ignoring that, lets look at the first half of that. He lists a source which itself says that the bottom 90%'s wages have stagnated. Now, for a better source when we look at this we see a vastly different picture. We see that it has declined from its position in 74, but has grown since 84. However, you also need to realize that the method that was used to calculate this, is deeply troublesome and can lead to completely opposite conclusions depending on the basket of goods chosen. Each year that basket gets better, and needs to be adjusted to reflect this. Here is a better article on this.
From there on out, the article only gets worse.
However, I'm sure he's managed to garner a lot of clicks by writing an inflammatory simplistic article, so in their book, mission accomplished.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I find a flaw in the author's use of current events as evidence in support of some of Marx's views. Let's not forget that there hasn't been anything resembling "pure" capitalism on the planet, and specifically in the US, for at least a hundred years. Certainly not in my 43 years. And most if not all of the cited so-called ills of capitalism could not exist in a pure capitalist economy, and would be of lesser magnitude than they are in proportion to the degree to which the economy was capitalist.
While Communism has been proven to be a wrong answer to all the evils of capitalism, it doesn't make these evils any less true or evil. Marx spotted the problems right on, it's just the solutions he came up with weren't realistic, assuming humans aren't inherently lazy, dishonest and close-minded.
I'd say this is the main problem with the Zeitgeist series: the problems it points out are spot on, it's the solutions that are unrealistic.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
The real problem is that we are too dependent on banks, while allowing them to take unreasonable risks. With our money. In these circumstances, yes, banks do need to be saved. If we don't want government to save failing banks, then we have two options: make sure they never fail, or make sure that if they fail, they don't do a lot of damage.
One possibility is to make bankers personally liable when they lose money that other people entrusted to them, instead of giving them a bonus and a new overpaid job, while the people lose their homes.
Don't feed the trolls, mon
It's not just individuals. Corporations can lose their savings and cant get loans to cover costs, which would force them out of business. It would have resulted in a far greater job loss than which have already occurred. Job losses mean less consumers in the economy which will affect more businesses. It is a vicious cycle.
One of the requirements in a capitalistic economy is a sound banking system. Entities need to be able to safely store their wealth and take out loans to cover their cash flow needs. When these institutions fail, it is the government's responsibility to fix the problem if it expects a functioning economy.
It is sad that in the USofA, you have to sped three paragraph just to state that your are not communist. This just because your are making some half positive comment on a piece of text. Witch hunt?
Hitler had a few good points to... but taken on the whole, his ideas were horrifying. And before anyone starts spouting off about mentioning Hitler means you lose the internet, I'd like to point out that communism killed farm more people in concentration camps than Hitler could have even dreamed of.
If more people read Marx instead of equating Soviet style government "communism" with Marxism, reading and studying what Marx actually wrote wouldn't be so controversial. But of course, the USA continues to rail against that particular bogeyman long after it collapsed.
Lehmans going down was an effect, not a cause!
Banks are one of the most highly regulated parts of the economy. There's very little vestige of the free market in any of the large banking institutions. It's no coincidence that areas of the economy that are tightly controlled by the government (banking, medicine, insurance, finance) are the areas that tend to be the most screwed up.
For better or worse, if you want an example of a free-market bank, look at something like PayPal. It has so far avoided being regulated as a bank. It has some severe problems, but at least it's nowhere close to collapsing like the 'official' banks did.
Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail which resulted in making the financial crisis much worst. It was a test of pure capitalism that failed.
If we had let every single other "too big to fail" banks to go under as well, it would have resulted in a worse financial crisis in the short term. The problem with capitalism is that people are unwilling to accept that sometimes people lose money. You don't try to prevent that by bailing people out, that makes it worse in the long term. You try to prevent crashes by making good decisions. It won't always work, sometimes a lot of people will lose a lot of money, and then you just hold on until the economy recovers. It always will.
Sure because the can has been kicked down the road for so long that institutions that should have failed before they got so large were instead propped up.
I didn't see the part of capitalism in which the government is supposed to prop up failing institutions (say by lowering interests rates to keep stock prices artificially high), but of course that is all capitalism's fault too.
And I'm pretty sure those bailouts will end up being a much bigger productivity and wealth killer than a systemic failure of the banking would have been. And of course a systemic failure of the banking system is also a bigger productivity and wealth killer than actually having that severe recession 10 years ago would have been.
But none of that has anything to do with the simple fact that the original post wasn't claiming that banks failing was the problem so claiming it was doing so was either in error or intentionally misleading.
The love of money is the root of all evil.
The problem with Marx's ideas is that, if fully implemented, they would result in a thoroughly undemocratic and unaccountable state. And then it would devolve quickly into something non-communist and dictatorial.
Marx made a big mistake in ignoring human nature and presuming that it would be possible to replace a political system that tries to hold people to account and tries to keep politician's base urges in check with... nothing much really. Communism never really was a replacement for capitalism - it was a replacement for democracy.
Capitalism's woes aren't going to be fixed by going back to Marx. It's only going to be fixed by analysing the problems we have and addressing them in a way that keeps the good bits of our socio-economic and political structure intact. Something the article fails to do. We need our democracy; it has its flaws (just have a look at the average person) but everything else quickly turns into dictatorship. And we may need some capitalism as well, since it turned out in the past that other systems have big issues tying a value to goods and services, the resulting inefficiency causing low living standards and lack of necessities.
Those savings are insured too. You do realize that just about any bank anywhere can give you a loan? Also, banks are sitting tight on their hoards of cash in fear at the moment, so it's not like getting loans is easy anyway.
There have been bank panics before. That's what insurance is for. People who bought uninsured instruments knew they were taking a risk. When institutions fail, government should let them. After all, you don't want to privatize gains and socialize losses, do you.
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" - Winston Churchill
I thought philosophical types specialized in the "shades of grey" areas.
...they've already found the -ism that fits their preestablished view of the world / needs and aspirations.
Then they become -ists of the said -ism, and as such they preach their -ism as a perfect weapon in the endless battle against... well, whatever lies on the polar opposite of their perfectly white -ism.
Mostly all shades of gray of all other -isms out there.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
It would have allowed some worthless securities to maintain their clarly overvalued nature for a little longer, sure. So that even more leverage could be applied on top of them and their enivitable evential collapse made even worse. That doesn't seem such a great plan to me.
Yes maor bank faulires would have been catostrophic for the economy, but doubling down so that a future collapse is even bigger does not make things better - unless all you care about is right now of course.
And no Americans would not suddenly lose all their savings. The FDIC would cover that, well the Federal Government would because the FDIC doesn't have enough money. So instead of the banks being bailed out and billions of dollars being handed to the big banks by the government, the banks would fail and that money would be handed out directly to the people instead.
I'm not quite sure how me saying that the banks and their owners should be allowed to lose all their money, while the people are directly bailed out makes me an evil free market loving moron. But apparently handing over billions of dollars to the top 0.005% of the wealthy is the socalist thing to do?
Exactly.
Communism is scary to those in power....it puts power back into the hands of the people, not an elite ruling class.
And that scares the living fuck out of The Man.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Money isn't the best way to allocate the worlds resources? I mean, it seems to me that we have tried exactly two things : First we gave more resources to who had the bigger club, then we tried allocating resources based on money (Whether that money was in the form of food, gold or paper dollars it's still money). And then we stopped innovating on that front... Maybe there is another way to do things? I don't know what it is, but it seems reasonable to me to ask the question.
When the U.S. forefathers where looking for the best form of government they realized each had good and bad attributes; and, when in their pure form eventually oppress humanity. For example, a pure democracy will oppress the minority (mob rule), a pure republic will oppress a majority (serfs). Jefferson came to a realization that pitting them against each other would put them in a balance. The same could be said for socialism and capitalism. Capitalism oppresses the workers (indentured servitude). Socialism oppresses the gifted (creativity stagnation). If you pit them against each other neither is capable of overpowering each other.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
For those who have even glanced at a history of economics, Marx takes on a rather different appearance. Along with John Stuart Mill and a few others, Marx was one of the founders of analyzing the stability of market economies in the wake of early-19th century boom/bust cycles -- which according to prevailing theory were impossible.
Later, Ricardo was so thoroughly embraced (for reasons not relevant here) that most of that prior work was swept under the rug until the Great Depression. Then we had Keynes, Hicks, and others (who disinterred the works of the economists of a century earlier). They in turn were swept under the rug by the 70s until the current depression -- which the prevailing theories of the last 30+ years tell us is impossible.
And so it goes.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I've never actually studied Marx, but that's pretty much the impression i've gotten second hand. He didn't think communism was going to happen anytime soon. It was Lenin and co who (purposefully?) misinterpreted what Marx said and claimed communism could work at the time they staged their revolutions.
In 20 or 40 or 100 years we may finally be at the point where we've figured out alternative forms of energy and automated production means we can make more than enough for everyone with a minimal amount of human labor. (Assuming we survive that long of course.) At that point we'll be seriously looking back at what Marx had to say. We may find that he didn't get everything right but i suspect he'll have gotten closer to a good solution for that situation than what capitalism would dictate.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I'm shocked at the level of rational discussion in this thread. I thought this was going to be an epic flamefest, but instead, it's a rational discourse of where Marx got it right, where he got it wrong, and how this ties into today's economic policy.
Carry on, Slashdot.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Capitalism is constant growth.
If that happens in the human body they call it cancer.
Perhaps its the same in society and the time is coming to try something new.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
The problem with Marxism is that there is never equality among people and the human condition will always respond to it. Take my wife for example. She is a physician that usually works 50-60 hours per week. She also spent 8 years in med school and residency. You think for one moment she is going to work that hard (or at all) if she is not rewarded for her efforts and investment? Right. Lots of luck with that.
Conservative, mod down for violating
You are complaining about the very mechanisms of social hierarchy: an instinct baked into the human condition.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Anyhow, if you want to steal wealth from the average family there's no surer way than printing lots of new currency, which dilutes the value of existing currency, and handing that new currency to your buddies on Wall Street (Goldman Sachs/etc) and politically connected corporate socialists.
And yet you'll get people here holding this^ up as an example of how capitalism has failed...
I think an explanation that's easier for the Slashdot crowd to understand is the idea of distributed decision making. Imagine the Internet model vs. the AOL model. We're 100% better off with millions of websites starting and thriving or failing on their own vs. the idea of what people will access online being decided inside a board room at Time Warner. For non-computer geeks I've described this as Organic vs. Industrial Economics.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I still think P.J. O'Rourke's Eat The Rich is the best book on this subject. Every Economics major should have to read this book. His basic premise is that almost any socioeconomic system can work provided that there is rule of law and private property rights. Take away these things and nothing works, whether it be capitalism, socialism, communism or anything else.
Proverbs 21:19
"I would never join a club that would have me as a member?"
My only suggestion would be... don't acquire your political beliefs solely through classes that are intended to teach you political beliefs. Take history classes, and see how the various political systems really worked out. NOT history classes focused around particular belief systems.
Most sociology and political science classes are taught by people who, in one way or another, are highly biased. There's very little actual hypothesis testing. A relatively neutral reading of history is about the only way to actually apply a little bit of scientific methodology to the field.
No I did not read the entire thread...
The point most people miss is this about human nature -
People work toward reward. People will not work for nothing. If you reward someone for doing good, then punish someone for doing bad, they will work at doing good - Basics
Now, if you allow people to create something, exchange what they have created for reward, they will create more of it and grow. If you allow someone to create a business and allow that business to grow, they will hire people. Let them reward the people that produce and not reward the people who do not. The people who produce will be successful and the people who do not will not succeed. (again, basics)
If, however, you remove the reward and have everyone produce so everyone has the same thing, you will have a few who produce alot and a lot who produce nothing. This will fail. If you do not reward people who produce nothing, they will begin to produce so they can survive. Ideally, this is a simple solution. In practice, there are limits.
don't confuse cronyism, corporatism and statism with capitalism
I don't see how continuing to trade garbage securities as though everything was fine would have made things better.
The mortgage backed securities problem is that they were crappy assets, and everyone pretended they were just fine. Then when someone realized they were crap, everyone started calling in their bets and the system collapsed.
Continuing to pretends they were fine and letting the system continue to build on them would have been MORE disatersous, not less.
The liquidity of the mortgage backed securities market didn't actually change the value of the underlying mortgages, people just REALIZED that they were stuck in a ponzi scheme of near worthless debt. Ive never heard someone suggest that allowing a ponzi scheme to continue would lessen the impact
Usually followed with severe suppression of human rights and mass executions.
You whacked yourself in the head with a hammer thinking it would feel good, but it hurt. How many times more will you do it before you realize it will never feel good, it will always hurt?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." - Winston Churchill
Life ain't fair, the world isn't perfect and it doesn't owe you a damn thing. Quit bitching and get to work. Don't like the results? Work harder, or better yet, work smarter, if you can figure it out. Either way, quit relying on others to give you something that someone else worked their asses off to earn.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
He created a flawed mechanism for analysing history. Like the Flinstones, he comically projects an 18th/19th century social relationships, back to the dawn of civilisation.
I used to jest that the Marxist deconstruction of the Jurassic revealed that it was a class struggle between herbivorous dinosaurs and large meat-eaters.
Despite this near-sightedness, Marx was EXACTLY right in his diagnosis of the evils, ills and discontents of market capitalism.
And he was just as flawed, to an equal extent, in his prescription for those evils.
The truth is, those who exploited market capitalism for exclusivity of wealth, power and domination were just as empowered to do the same thing with the intellectual and social methods of Marx's "revolution".
And really. When it comes down to it, how is the organisation of the modern corporation, with it's CEO, directors, officers and hierarchy of management bearing Q10's and quarterly projections any different from the Supreme Soviet, commissars, apparatchiks and 5-year plans? Not at all.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The problem with communism is that it doesn't scale well. Works fantastically well for a nuclear family --maybe even a whole village or commune. But once a group gets large enough that accountability is obscured, there are too many that shamelessly take (or don't give much) and it all falls apart in a downward spiral of cynicism and demoralization.
Ask me about my sig!
The only reason to do any any work, where you are not doing work for yourself or being charitable is profit.
What's the reason to go out there and do work if you are not making a profit and you are not doing it to satisfy some other feeling of yours, like maybe you are feeling charitable that day?
Profit is the feedback mechanism that tells you that your way of spending capital/land/labor and organization of these resources is a meaningful pursuit.
Without profit motive there is no feedback mechanism that you can use to figure out if you are doing something USEFUL in the market.
Without profit resources are spent wastefully and in fact they are spent destructively (when we talk about resources being spent by force, like in case of governments doing the spending.)
Government can make you work, it can give you work to do and it can print currency to pay you a nominal salary for this work. But government cannot make your work useful in the sense that market would want to pay you for this work. Either this work will be too expensive due to all of the regulations and bureaucracy built around it, or it will be meaningless, like building and rebuilding roads that market cannot actually use for anything, and which cannot be used to trade with other people who are making something of value.
Marxism relies on people behaving like bees, which is fine for bees, it just doesn't work for people.
You can't handle the truth.
Except that wasn't really funny at all. Just kinda stupid.
... that it would only result to a dystopian society because keeping people on a leash to: conform, lose the ability to excel amongst it's peers, and most specially acquire wealth and private property is anathema to it's nature.
Capitalism fails when it is no longer a free market economy, when the government steps in and choose winners and losers like what it is doing now with banks who have gambled all their capital in ultra-risky investments and the government bailed them out. They should have been bankrupted and allowed to fail. Capitalism != Crony Capitalism.
The securities were overvalued, but they are far from worthless.
When Lehman Brothers was bankrupted, it was forced to sell all its assets which resulted in a short term drop in valuation because there wasn't enough liquidity in the market to buy them all. It resulted in the value of similar securities held by other institutions to drop which could force them to default, forcing a sell off which would bring other banks who down in the process. The government had to step in to stop the fire sale so that assets can trade at closer to their real value. The US government recovered the majority of the money it invested, so these assets are far from worthless.
This idea that businesses and banks will be the only ones that suffer, while the average American will be fine is completely wrong. Americans are employed by corporations who rely on the banks to run their day to day business. If the banks fail, many of these corporations will fail, which will cause people to lose their jobs in great numbers.
After the fall of communism, the Russians learned that "everything Lenin said about communism was false and everything he said about capitalism was true." Paraphrase and partial quote from William Gibson, Pattern Recognition.
Communism and Capitalism (as idealized by Ayn Rand for e.g) do not exist and have never been tried....because
human reality is different.
there is things like protect your family...give preference to people you like compared to some unknown etc etc...
Practical capitalism or communism go slowly to a few controlling everything...We saw in in Russia/China and we
see it in Big banks / communication companies etc here.
The extremists always win, but to me it seems like the best way is a healthy mixed system where we have regulated capitalism in the marketplace, and socialism for things like infrastructure and health care.
But what do I know.
Point is no government will be perfect.. Capitalism is the best one, hands down..
The securities weren't complete crap, they were just overvalued. Banks who over leveraged themselves too much with these bad securities were the ones who were going to fail. Banks who took a more conservative risked were able to absorb the losses of these securities.
The problem is that when a large over leveraged institution goes bankrupted and is forced to sell the assets all at once, the prices will temporarily fall below their true value in the market because there are not enough immediate buyers. This will temporarily drive down the value of the assets of the less risky banks which could cause them to default even if they are financially sound in the long term. It was a market failure so the government stepped in to intervene
the worst of "the financial crisis" hasn't happened yet, that can has been kicked down the road some more.
I don't think there's any can-kicking, although without strange and unforseen events we certainly haven't seen the worst of it yet. We'll know more on Thursday, but there's no reason to hope for a strong, coherent, effective policy. And if there is one, it is guaranteed not to pass, because politics trump urgent citizen needs. During the budget hostage crisis it became clear that "strong" was not in the President's vocabulary. Where are the candidates I'm looking for?
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
Immiseration. Marx claimed that capitalism would immiserate workers..... (America's median wage has been stagnant for roughly 40 years.) In macro terms, labor's share of income has plummeted, while the lion's share of growth has accrued to those at the very top.
Obviously the author is not paying attention to what happened 40-45 years ago, namely defaulting on the promise to pay real money for federal reserve notes, destruction of currency, inflation, growth of government based on destruction of currency, capital flight and creation of more monopolies, due to increase of gov't size and thus regulations, which leads to creation of super-incomes for those on the very top of the ladder, but destroys competition and subsequently destroys the economy. Of-course wages are stagnant in this depression, which is combined with inflation.
This has nothing to do with anything Marx was talking about.
Crisis. As workers were paid less and less, capitalism would be prone to chronic, perpetual crises of overproduction
- ?? :) OVERPRODUCTION? ::))))) IN USA?? :)))
OK, this is just ridiculous on its face. USA has 53 Billion/Month trade deficit. USA has overconsumption based on inflation and debt but it has no over-production at all. Once China stops subsidizing the US consumer, US consumer will stop consuming, as there will be nothing to consume.
for they wouldn't have the means to purchase or invest in enough goods to keep the economy humming.
- In 19 century USA, the production was growing immensely, while consumption was also growing even though there was actual deflation (contraction of money supply due to gold being money).
Stagnation. Here's Marx's most controversial â" and most curious â" prediction. That as economies stagnated, real rates of profit would fall.
- there is NOTHING controversial about this. This is true on its face value and if taken separately out of any context. As economy stagnates, profits must fall.
Of-course profits ARE falling, as all of the inflation is wiping out any real profits, and whatever profits are made by super-banks etc., that's all government propped up via further currency destruction.
Alienation. As workers were divorced from the output of their labor, Marx claimed, their sense of self-determination dwindled, alienating them from a sense of meaning, purpose, and fulfillment.
- it's called specialization, which eventually is replaced with automation. Free market capitalism solves this type of problem by automation, where people used to spend all the time doing the same manual or mental task over and over again, free market capitalism solves this by increased efficiency through investments into new types of tools, eventually automating all of the repetitive tasks away. As to feeling satisfaction with ones own work - this is best rewarded in capitalism and it's definitely shunned upon with unionized approach to work.
Unions do not like to reward performance, they reward seniority.
The other part of the problem is government making it increasingly difficult for anybody to start their own business that competes with established monopolies, that government creates, maintains, protects, bails out and stimulates and taxes for. Try and start your own business and see how that works out for you in this over-regulated, overtaxed market, which also will not let you have business credit due to the fact that gov't destroys value of money and savings and makes it impossible to get meaningful credit and all the money goes into government bonds - this is by design.
False consciousness. According to Marx, one of the most pernicious aspects of industrial age capitalism was that the proles wouldn't even know they were being exploited â" and might even celebrate the very factors behind thei
You can't handle the truth.
Excuse me, but I once tried to read Das Kapital, and it bored me to tears.
With a lot of effort I can try to read the works of philosophers that use big letters, common words, and have pretty pictures interspersed (e.g. I could read Also Sprach Zarathustra by Nietzsche in the original German, even if it isn't upside-down).
But the extremely tedious economic lecture of Marx is really difficult to get through (unless you're an economist I suppose).
Ask Slashdot: pointers to texts that elucidate Marx' 19th century theories and are easy to read by the 21st century populace who
wait..
sorry thought I just saw a Wookieee
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
More to the point, why the hell is this on the front page of slashdot? I'm having a really hard time tying this together with any other article on the front page.
Seriously what does this have to do with slashdot?
I bet I could find a link on moveon or Democratic underground that proves he is a fascist.
My entire social circle (except for one guy) believes that Obama has proven himself to be a moderate republican. The other guy thinks he's a communist. It makes for many lulz.
"Liechtenstein is the world's largest producer of sausage casings, potassium storage units, and false teeth."
It's been tried. 2nd chapter of acts, bible. And check title grammar, gheez.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
It's sad that you can't have a discussion about Marx's philosophy without having to qualify that you aren't a communist. I feel like any time I discuss Marx, I'm forced into being defensive. That said, it's a real shame that things are that way because IMO Marx's greatest contribution to the world of political philosophy was NOT communism but rather his assessment and critique of Capitalism which, for all intents and purposes, is spot-on. Essentially, he believed Capitalism was a necessary evil that would bring immense positive technological changes to the world, but that would ultimately be unsustainable. It is at that point that he believed people's minds would begin changing in a direction that would facilitate communism. In a modern context, he was essentially foreshadowing the outsourcing of labor. Labor will constantly be moved to markets that have lower standards of living and a lack of unionization, but eventually everybody's standard of living will be raised by that process. It's at that point that workers will realize they are the real owners of everything and will become uncooperative with the "powers that be" aka the bourgeois. And, FWIW, it's a shame that most people don't realize that Marx did not believe that Communism was the best form of society, he just believed it was the inevitable direction it would go. He actually believed that a "simple trade" economy is the perfect way of life, aka pre-industrialized America.
If anyone has actually read the Communist Manifesto, they would note that at least some of the things Marx predicted have come to pass:
The irony, of course, is that we're on the way to having this happen anyway. Marx was describing a historical trend. Trying to short circuit that process or speed it along is wrong headed. Trying to stop it (as we have done with anti-trust legislation) is also wrong. It make take another few hundred years, but we will get to the point where workers are interested, active, shareholders in their own companies.
...what do we replace capitalism with?
Really, a friend noted that Tuli Kupferberg said that Marx's description was dead on, but his solution didn't work, years ago.
On the other hand, in every country outside the US, one of the two or three major parties are *socialists* (try reading the British Labour party's own information; I'll just note that their official anthem is The Red Flag).
Capitalism under *some* control sorta-kinda worked, but since the late seventies, all control, some of which was agreed to by the biggest capitalists in the first half of the 20th century (looking up who created the Fed is left as an exercise for the student: hint: the crash of '07), has been rolled back and rolled back, and the crashes are much worse, and more frequent.
We'll note that the Tea Party and friends are fascists[1] who don't want to admit it. We'll also note that they actively do not believe in society nor community, and that *everything* should be monetized[2].
Socialism, as practised in the world outside the US, is social control over the means of production, among other things.[3]
So let's go on, since "unbridled capitalism" clearly doesn't work.[4].
mark
1. Someone who speaks with authority on fascism, Benito Mussolini, the first fascist dictator, liked to quote that "fascism is more properly called corporatism, since it's the merger of state and corporate power".
2. Which suggests that those that are married aren't, and that they ought to be paying their live-in mistresses or misters.
3. As opposed to the US. For example, around '96, there was a news story about Walmart moving into the outside of a town somewhere out west (US), and, with the exception of the drug store, drove every single business in the town out of business. Then, five years later, Walmart decided they weren't making enough profit, and closed the store, telling the town to drive to another store 30 mi. away.
4. It's like AI: whatever rules are let go, and there are still no more jobs, and more crashes, then that's not Real unbridled capitalism.
Groucho had a better handle on politics than Karl ever did.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/g/grouchomar146422.html
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Groucho Marx
The problem with Communism is that someone has to make the decisions, and to that person (or persons) goes all the power and wealth. If you say, "Well yeah, but since everyone owns the means of production then they all get to decide." Ok, but if everyone gets a vote, isn't that democracy? And what if they vote to take away decision making rights from undesirables? Then not everyone owns the means of production, so it's not communism.
Basically communism can't happen because it's self contradictory and impossible. Lenin did try, and was unable to create real communism, and everyone forever will also be unable to because it's literally not possible. And that's without taking human nature, greed, love, power, etc., into the mix.
Many people do not realise this, but it is important to differ between Karl Marx the political activist and Karl Marx the economist. Many parts of Marx' economy theories are teached in western universitys today, including in the U.S., and many of his points are taken most seriously in modern capitalist economy. After all Marx himself claimed to be a follower of Adam Smith which is a star among many laizzes faire capitalists.
Failure is part of capitalism. An essential part.
The whole point of capitalism is when a company/institution screws up or ceases to serve its customers, it loses market share, goes under or even dies... and other better/more responsible ones take their place.
Notwithstanding that a big reason why the banks took such big risks is because they know they are backed by the government. Do you think they would have made all those irresponsible loans if they weren't being backed by the government purchases at Freddie and Fannie...
Do you think people would have entrusted the banks wit their money if the banks were not FDIC insured?
Banking is and always been a heavy government enterprise. Perhaps for good reason.
Worthless is obvious hyperbole, as in essentially every usage of the phrase it means "worth far less than advertised".
Those fire sale prices were closer to the real value than what the government tried to stop them at. Just because the government succeeded in its bail out and kicked the can down the road doesn't change the nature of the problem. Now all that stuff that was almost set to its actual value is overvalued again and the banks will all fail again and need bailing out again. Only of course now the problem it larger, and at some point the bail out fails. US real estate is still overpriced. US banks are still over leveraged. The US financial system is still a house of cards.
I didn't claim that businesses and banks are the only ones that suffer - of course arguing against absurd claims you make up is always easy so go ahead.
I'm not sure if you've looked at the unempoyment and underemployment numbers recently - but I'm pretty sure said bailouts didn't stop that "cause people to lose their jobs in great numbers" part.
Yes banks failing would suck greatly for everyone. But it would suck less than them failing later in even bigger fashion.
Bailouts would be fine if the government bit the bullet and nationalized *every* (yes even the ones not in trouble, tough luck for them your industry is no more) bank in the country and ate the losses completely. And then started a privitization scheme to get out of that business - after reworking the entire regulatory framework with no lobbiest around anymore since all the banks wanting to lobby don't exist anymore. Though that may be more painful for the people than just letting them fail it'd be less painful than the end collapse of continual bailouts.
- Immiseration: Marx wrote about immiseration, the poor getting poorer, etc. in the mid-19th century. Are we supposed to say that he was right that "real wages would fall, and working conditions deteriorate" between then and now? Ever tried working for a 19th-century wage in a 19th-century factory? On both these counts, workers are now much better off than they have ever have been (excluding the effects of the current recession/stagnation). And the historical trend has been for real wages to increase. Maybe not as much as productivity, but that is a red herring: the point is that the poor have not gotten poorer, virtually everyone has been getting richer. Real wages have been stagnant? Maybe (although you also have to look at total compensation including benefits), but since virtually everything has been getting cheaper, people have still been getting richer: http://myslu.stlawu.edu/~shorwitz/Good/myths.htm
- Crisis: see the previous point for the claim that workers would be paid less and less. Which also contradicts what the author himself has said since we have moved from mere stagnation to a decrease in real wages (these are not the same thing). I don't understand what he means by overproduction, etc. If anything, there was too much demand (not too little) for many goods such as housing. There is also something strange about the idea that too little demand, rather than making prices fall to the lower equilibrium price, would lead to indebtedness. Too little demand (whatever that means) should lead to lower prices, and hence to lower levels of debt.
- Stagnation: seems plausible. But one should also mention that Marx's explanation for the TRPF, which was based on his labour theory of value, should be discarded along with the labour theory of value.
- Alienation: is there any evidence that workers are feeling more alienated now than before? And, even granted that Marx was correct about this, what should we do about it? Is there any system of production that does not result in either some degree of alienation or massive poverty due to a great lack of productivity. I, for one, would take some alienation at work 40h per week if it means that I can go back to my confortable home with all my gizmos, rather than having to work 7 days a week on my farm to barely scrape by.
- False consciousness: completely untestable since we have to assume that people are being exploited in the first place.
Problem solved. ... incoming excuses why it can't be done ...
As we knew it, there was nothing such as "communism". It was just an ugly form of Capitalism of State.
And still, there were rich and poor people. Members of the Party were rich and powerful.
All the others were poor and miserable.
And the so called "communism" was also responsible of harming the environment with obsolete industries.
There was never a true alternative to this flawed capitalist system.
The same goes for western style democracy.
They are imperfect, but they're the best we have had so far.
Marx's analysis of the flaws of capitalism is generally considered to be reasonable. His solutions are now known not to work too well. (On the other hand, in the last century Russia has tried monarchy, democratic communism, dictatorial communism, democratic anarchy, capitalist oligarchy, and the current capitalist semi-dictatorship. None worked all that well for them.)
Marx was quite right about a key point - if capitalism is allowed to use competition between workers to drive wages down, buying power drops and the system stalls, or stabilizes with most people just above some minimum survival level. That's where we are now. (Wal-Mart has a useful way to measure this. They look at weekly store-to-store sales over each month, and observe that their customer base is presently running out of money before the end of each month, and they then stop buying until their next paycheck.)
Unions were developed to beat that problem. The purpose of unions is to force employers to pay employees more than they are economically worth. This helps both union and non-union workers; in a society where a sizable fraction of workers belong to unions, non-union employers have to pay wages competitive with union shops to avoid unionization. This was well understood in the 1930s through the 1970s. The phrase used back then was "labour should not be regarded merely as a commodity or article of commerce." That sounds strange today. Which is part of the problem.
After a slow decade in the 1970s, we got Reagan, the "great communicator", who sold America on "unfettered" capitalism. US median per-capita real income hasn't gone up much since, after a huge rise in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. The US peak was in 1973.
Government is not neutral in this. Deregulation, free trade, weak antitrust and labor law enforcement, anti-union state policies, and tax cuts for the rich all helped to reduce US wages.
The point here is that the economy has more than one stable state. One stable state looks like a third-world country - wages are at poverty levels, a few people have most of the money, disposable income is low, and production is limited by available disposable income. Another stable state has much higher wages and consumption levels. The US has seen both, and has chosen the former.
As far as I know, Marx still is considered the leading philosopher in modern philosophy of history. So I assume he indeed "may have had a point"...
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
Being forced to work for someone else isn't capitalism. But it is the bedrock of socialism.
You conveniently forgot to mention that in a socialist system, the state is supposed to provide everything you need to subsist and live ... such is not true in slavery. Slavery is turning humans into property and in the purest Capitalistic system, you can barter in anything -- even humans! Take Africans with no rights, transport them to United States and ta-da you have humans as property! The argument of the South was essentially that the nanny state North was trying to take their property ... if you studied American at all history, you'd know this.
The problem was not with Marx's analysis, but with his conclusions.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I'm mostly libertarian minded, but I realize that a pure libertarian state in a country our size just wouldn't work.
Pure communism won't work because we're humans, not ants.
Is Marxism to any degree correct? Ancient mankind observed the sun as a great ball of fire in the sky and held faith in an adjunct explanatory mythology. So like Marxism; A rudimentary foundation in direct observation embellished with lustrous imaginings. It is observed that property denotes social status and quality products are valued. Marx, his signature trait of pseudo-intellectual jargonism at full power, concocts a terminology where plainspokenness will do; this is "Commodity Fetishism." And then the inevitable drivel at which the weak-minded swoon, an assertion contracting all that is known about life and history, that the desire for nice stuff is a perversity spawned and propagated by Capitalism. No. The iPod is not a vice an that desire has existed always and everywhere throughout history under all systems of government, with the rare exception of the unconventional spartan sects which renounce it. And Marxism is all like that: Mundane observation, jargonistic terminology, idiotic reasoning. Again and again and again and great steaming piles of dialectical materialism and a labor theory of value.
Yet that Communism's modern means of advance are not the bloody civil wars and inhumane labor camps of the past but mincing quibbles by its eccentric supporters in this forum is certain progress.
It is noteworthy that in less than half a century the defenders of Communism have gone from "We will bury you," to questioning whether Karl Marx was actually right about anything, whatsoever. Now, after the Soviet Union, that great empire of Communism, has collapsed in economic ruin to reveal its vaunted record of equality and prosperity to be a great lie. Now, shrunken to its last vestiges in the grotesque spectacle of North Korea, reminding perpetually of the horror intrinsic to the Communist system.
Marx is to economics what Freud is to psychology; Each an intellectual neanderthal popularizing a fraudulent science of his own invention. As with with Christian leadership which Freud and Marx partially supplanted, they seduced legions of fools with nonsense.
Communism indefensible, its sympathizers retrench to ask, at least were Marx's criticisms of Capitalism correct. Communism is greatly diminished but plentiful fools remain to answer that question in the affirmative.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Hitler saw socialism as a stepping stone to communism. If his society resembles anything that communism could become then it would have been a very, dark future indeed.
Marx did not account for the human condition. Spirit, will and a simple concept called productivity.
We have arrived at being a welfare state where the productive support the non-productive. This is on of the many, inherent problems with union labor. It cannot be ignored and there certainly is no solution in the near future as long as liberals have a say in it.
The crash wouldn't have happened without extensive government interference in the market. Banks didn't take on subprime mortgages until the government and groups like ACORN "persuaded" (extorted, shamed, regulated, etc.) them to do so by various means. Why didn't they take them on? That practice of redlining everybody was complaining about as "unfair" existed for a reason --statistically too much risk in those areas. Banks didn't like people defaulting.
But once they were forced, they invented ways to pass off that high risk and still profit. That snowballed and next thing you know they were clamoring to take on risky mortgages. Oh yes, their greed, and the greed of homeowners who wanted something for nothing, made the crash bad. But the government and groups like ACORN set the ball rolling.
Marx described the mechanical forces driving human social evolution. Production relations are the infrastructure, they create a social superstructure. Each society evolves through a thesis-antithesis-synthesis process very similar to the ying-yang concept of Asia. So, capitalist society creates its own replacement: the industrial revolution that created capitalism has created the information revolution. Old ways of creating wealth are gradually being obsoleted. New ways are taking over. What the future society will look like? No one knows, but it will grow from the current advanced capitalist countries. A surprisingly insightful analysis can be found at Cracked: http://www.cracked.com/article_18817_5-reasons-future-will-be-ruled-by-b.s..html
I skipped right past TFS and into the inevitable flamewar and never bothered to notice that the blogger in question is Umair Haque, author of The New Capitalist Manifesto: Building a Disruptively Better Business. Haque is unapologetically pro-capitalism, and his book (which I'm reading now) is about the changes needed to make it a permanently-sustainable, society-lifting system without the government having to step in and tear it all apart.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Nothing compared to what they're regulated like here in Canada.
Big kerfuffle a decade ago because they all wanted to merge and aquire each other and other banks. "For the consumer benefit, of course." Centre-left Liberal party said, "No way."
As it stands, Canada's banks are the strongest and most stable in the world, bar none. Due to regulations, which our current right-wing Prime Minister holds up as examples at G8 & G20.
I'm assuming you are American? Because you're 100% and 180Â (degrees) wrong from a Canadian perspective.
Again, in Canada, the government ensures we have access to "generic" drugs: perfectly safe, chemically same, fraction of price. You may have heard of the busloads of Americans (maybe your own grandparents) coming up here for medicine.
We have government single-payer health care: I went for 4 doctors visits in past couple months: 2 with specialist. Total cost to me: $0.00 Cdn. Waiting time to see specialist: saw him tuesday after thursday referral. Cost of half dozen generic prescriptions: about $150 Cdn/US. (Note: I have to pay $192 / month BC medical insurance for 2 adults. That's > doubled what it was before right-wing provincial government took over 10 years ago.)
BC has no-fault "government" auto insurance company, ICBC. We have the lowest rates in the country, and get this: profits are put back in to high-crash intersection redesign or world class child safety seat research. Everyone loves to hate insurance companies, but we wouldn't trade it for the world! Ask former premier who promised to change it to private insurance, appointed an executive buddy to "investigate", result was, Do. Not. Touch.
For better or worse? Worse, I think. I'm sorry, but I wouldn't trust PayPal with change for a phone call.
Government being the source of the problem is the result of voting for incompetents that want to ruin government, and make no secret of that. Of course they're failures at providing good government.
The problem is the bigger the government the smaller the individual. When the government has HUGE contracts that it gives out to HUGE campaign donors, there is a problem. If the government does not have that many HUGE contracts, there are fewer problems. The HUGE donors also tend to get the rules written for/by them. Take the money away from the government and the rules get more fairly written. Communism is where the government owns EVERYTHING and that becomes worst of all.
Everywhere it's been tried! The only reason it survived as long as it did, was at the end of a gun. Capitalism WORKS, as long as you can get the over regulation burden of the imperial federal government off businesses back. The only reason we have this current love affair with communism, is the socialist professors, who were kids in the "free love" era of the 60's, are running the schools & colleges, and have brainwashed the youth into believing that all good comes from government, and corporations & capitalism is bad. Hopefully, when these idiot kids get out into the REAL WORLD, they learn that to earn money, you have to work. My 33 year old nephew was a skull full of mush liberal, until he got out of college, started WORKING for a LIVING, and found out how bad taxes were. He did a 180 and is now a conservative (not to be confused by republican).
It is not just the human greed. In nature big fish eats small fish, faster gazelle lives, other one get eaten, by the strongest lione first, the weaker later, and so on.
Human so called greed is just a way to proove yourself more capable or hard working than others *of course only considering ethical behaviors, then it is a different story). It is the same force that drives nature.
The difference between capitalism and communism is that in capitalism is seen as a driving force and it is encouraged in an ethical, reasonable manner (or it should) in communism you still have the greed but you are not allowed to say it or let alone pursue your goals. Only if you are a member of the party, then you stiull say "power to the working men" and you exploit them for your benefits. So it is basically the same thing but with a bit less freedom. No wonder communist regimes, being so "for the paople" have only been installed and enforced as dictatorships. If it were so good for the working men people would vot for it.
I bet I could find a link on moveon or Democratic underground that asserts he is a fascist.
FTFY
Celebrity worship is a poor substitute for Deity worship and costs more to boot.
Capitalism is just another word for freedom, and freedom is fraught with peril. No shit, Sherlock.
The collapse of the US economy is not inevitable.
Even in the recession we are experiencing, people go to work, pay taxes, buy homes and cars. Allowing the system to collapse will halt this economic activity and just make the economy longer to recover.
There are many pragmatic solutions that the government can pursue to help stabilize the banking system and stimulate the economy. Instead of nationalizing the banks or allowing them to fail, you can just create more regulation and oversight to prevent banks from taking excess risks in the future.
Both sides are right on some things but like anything you c an't be too extreme and swing all the way to one side or it goes wrong.
None of the systems are perfect. None of them fit every scenario. Within our family we operate on an almost perfectly communist system. As one moves further out from our nuclear family we become more capitalistic. Later it becomes more socialistic as you spread further. As we move more towards the government end of things it becomes more fascist. It is a spectrum. The trick is to use the best elements of each system and avoid fighting about dogma.
Yup. Plenty of examples of working implementations of "communism" exist (look at the communes in Spain, around the time of the civil war, or Fristaden Christiania, in Copenhagen, for instance).
The problem, like you stated, is that "pure communism" (i.e. communism without a capitalistic component) does not scale properly. The fact that people often equate "communism" simply with "state communism" or "stalinism" (due to ignorance or ideology), doesn't make it easier to discuss such things rationally. It's the same mistake that some other people do, when they equate "capitalism" simply with "laissez-faire, corporations-own-our-ass, capitalism", which is also a not very helpful simplification.
The truth is that probably none of the two economical/political models are optimal. Which is ok. We just have to stop pretending that full-on statism or full-on libertarianism are good solutions to any problem: there must be a healthy balance between the two. A sweet spot that simultaneously enables hard-working people to be rewarded appropriately AND provides a way to even out the socioeconomic asymmetries that result from asymmetric access to education, capital, healthcare, etc.
But I guess, for some people, it's more important to reinforce their own ideas/ideologies than to actually find working solutions for our global problems.
I didn't say it was. The financial system is another story though.
The banks all being nationalized does not halt all that economic activity.
And you can't just create more regulation and oversight because the banks are private companies with lawyers and lobbyists to attack that at the legislative step as well as in the courts after the fact. Of course if you nationalize it first, that problem goes away in a flash.
And I really don't think there is a way to "stablize the banking system and stimulate the economy" that doesn't also bail out the people who caused the problem in the first place. And reinforce their view that they can take stupid risks in order to make yet more money because the government will bail them out everytime. So sure you fix this problem, but a decade or two later something bigger appears because the same idiots are still doing the same thing.
You stop that cycle by letting those idiots lose all their wealth and then throwing them in prison for every no matter how minor activity they did that runs counter to some fraud law somewhere.
Nationalize all the banks today and people still go to work, pay taxes, buy home and cars tomorrow (and the next day and the next...)
If all those "firesale" assets were such great things after all then that nationalize will net the government a fortune and end all that "debt ceiling" crap overnight. If they aren't then might as well take the hit directly rather than with bankers taking their cut out of the bailouts.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Here's a free marketer's take on Umair Haque's article:
Harvard Business Review Goes Gaga over Karl Marx
You can't throw people in jail if they committed no crime. Both bankers and homeowners who caused this mess only crime was making a poor financial decision.
Even if you throw people in jail, it won't prevent the next crisis in 20 years because human greed will always get the best of them. A new group of idiots start making money and think that they know what they are doing and get over confident. It would create another boom and bust cycle.
Some people who caused the problems will get bailed out, but it is part of the costs of stimulating the economy. If it results in more jobs, then it will be a net win. You can also stimulate the economy by taxing the banking system and using the money on other parts of the economy.
Nationalizing the financial system is not a realistic solution and doesn't solve the problem. Corporations will asks for special favors from the government who has little incentive to minimize risks. Voters will want cheap loans and the government will give them to people who don't deserve it.
Lehman Brothers failed and it was allowed to go bankrupt, this did not make financial crisis worse!
The destruction of that company displayed just how rotten the underlying economic and financial principles were, upon which the entire banking and investment sector were residing for the last 100 years, restructuring of debt was absolutely necessary, and failures of banks and other financial firms needed to continue. Today US and the world's economy would have been improving instead of going ever deeper down the drain with all the bail out and stimulus that was allocated to hide all of the malinvestments that were made, indeed due to government intervention - free money (1 and then 0% interest rates at the Fed's discount window) and all of the policies that sent jobs out of the country and at the same time caused the credit bubble (dot com, then housing, now US treasuries).
This has nothing to do with capitalism at all, AT ALL.
Here is a speech given on 13th of November, 2006, explaining in precise detail how and why the economy was failing, so it was clearly predictable, because it was absolutely explainable, and the explanation was fairly well understood by enough people who made quite a killing on this.
You can't handle the truth.
Here we are in a country with a capitalist economy and republic form of government.
We constantly read about how bad it is and how much better would be a communist form of government.
Would we be able to read the same kind of criticism if we lived under a communist form of government?
Face it, it's not perfect, but it's the best anyone has ever had and ever will.
If you're honest and look at the big picture rather than single out exceptions you can't argue the matter.
Marx did have great insights, but there were two very serious errors that don't get the attention they deserve:
He assumed that there was no more potential for generating wealth through innovation, that is, that there would be no new industrial products developed (this was before the computer, the automobile, etc.)
Given that redistribution of wealth was counted as a virtue to a communist mentality, he failed to recognize that the people most motivated to run a communist party (as opposed to simply voting for one) would be people who believed in unrestricted theft.
Capitalism has its own flaws, of course, such as how people are seduced by the theoretical notion of equality while overlooking that fact that in practice wealth tends to flow to those who already have the most.
for most vapid headline of the year goes to this submission.
"Marx may have had a point?" - gee, think so, captain obvious? I'd think that in 2011 the facts that Marx's texts are taught in a variety of disciplines (not only Economics) and are considered cornerstones for a great deal of political, economic, and social theory, would probably serve to show that the dude "may have had a point."
I personally may disagree with a great deal of Marxist thought, but I'd certainly give him more credit than that. "Marx may have been right" was probably a better headline, as it at least describes the points that the author was trying to make - even in a capitalist society, we have to accept that a certain amount of "dirty communist" thought might be wise to at least consider.
Not that i agree or disagree with his observations, but the problem is we don't have a true capitalistic economy here. Its been borderline socialist for many many decades. ( which personally i think is a natural progression due to how people 'operate' as a group )
So we really don't have anything to judge his writings with and its just a bunch of hot air trying to get ratings by using buzz words.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
...but he's a guy who sees just about everything from a lefty point of view. He defends Marx by relying on the usual Utne Reader/Mother Jones hyperbole and meaningless factoids. Do most people in the country work for either for Walmart or McDonalds? Rich people of a certain bracket may indeed be getting fabulously richer, but that doesn't mean people are getting poorer. Did anyone have HDTV, cellphones you can fit in your pocket back in 1980? How prevalent was open heart surgery for heart disease? Come to think of it, what was the average life span back then versus today?
if you studied American at all history, you'd know this.
And if you didn't deliberately play fast and loose with semantics, you'd have nothing left to say.
If that was the South's position (you are grossly simplifying it), it really doesn't matter, because it's based on the false premise that a fellow human is the same as a hammer you've made or a goat you've raise. They're not, and so that line of reasoning is a non-starter. Regardless, what previous slave holders said has nothing to do with the reality that capitalism doesn't include forced transactions between people. You're in a market when you're only option besides participating in a transaction is torture, death, etc. Of course you know all of this, and you're just trolling in a completely idiotic way.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Every single point he discussed was just wrong, usually on his own facts and analysis, having nothing to do with Marxism.
Immiseration - Wages have been stagnant in advanced countries, but have grown tremendously for billions across the world, lifting them out of grinding poverty.
Crisis of Overproduction - Much better explained by the Austrian economists.
Stagnation - Real rates of production. This whole paragraph is just a hash of nonsense. The majority of the world has been lifted out of poverty, and he calls that "shrinking real value". What a buffoon.
Alienation - Yes, being a human shovel in a coal mine was much more fulfilling than being a corporate cog, which was much more fulfilling than providing one of the zillions of niche services directly to a consumer. The whole direction of labor has been away from the mechanical, whether physical or mental. Mechanical can be automated.
False consciousness - This is always the funniest. If a prole doesn't agree with Marx, the prole has a false consciousness. Maybe the prole just isn't educated enough to believe something so idiotic as Marxism?
Commodity fetishism - Somehow the author convinces himself that "more, bigger, faster, cheaper, nastier, now" are mystical illlusions. Not even a marxist would be so idiotic - they'd be the first to recognize that these are real material qualities.
The guy doesn't even know what Marxism is, participates in many of it's follies, and adds a boatload of his own. Bozo. It's like a blog post of some college poly sci major on a drunken bender, thinking he is being profound.
Capitalism is a shitty economic system.
The problem isn't that Communism doesn't work, the problem is that people are still thinking in terms of Westphalian nation-states. Communism may be difficult to impossible to implement on a large scale, but it's been successfully done many times on a small scale. There are successful intentional communities run on communist principles all over the world. Just look at the kibbutzim in Israel - they held all property in common, and even raised children communally. It was only outside economic forces from a fiercely anti-communist society that finally broke most trditional kibbutzim (there's an "urban kibbutz" movement that's building momentum in Israeli cities, but they are more akin to modern cooperatives than the traditional kibbutz). In less hostile environments, communist communities can last up to a century (the Harmony Society, which lost membership only because it was started by a religious movement where many members took vows of celibacy). Imyself live in an intentional community of students run on communist principles that has been going since 1974.
In reality, people as a whole aren't very smart, and tend to act in their own self interest rather than for the good of the economy. Communism is great on paper. Better than capitalism, actually. But paper never seems to account for the greedy bastard factor.
It's the other way around. Paper accounts for the greedy bastard factor quite well actually.
It's the altruistic, fair, socially responsible, nice and kind bastards that fuck the things up for everyone.
Both the ideal communism and the ideal capitalism make the same basic mistake - replacing the actual "people" with their own version of a "perfect man" multiplied so that the entire population is made out of perfect copies of the said "perfect man".
And then jumping to the logical conclusion of such an imagined system.
Anyway, any comparison between capitalism and communism is as logical as comparing apples and bears.
One being an economic system and the other being a political system. Or one being a plant and other being an animal.
You'd think that people would catch on already, being that there is no Capitalism as a system of government in Civilization.
Then again, there is no Fascism either.
Unless one argues that all games where one churns out military units in order to gain and maintain the control of the land and/or resources are actually fascist dictatorship simulators.
Search your feelings. You know it to be true.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
After a slow decade in the 1970s, we got Reagan, the "great communicator", who sold America on "unfettered" capitalism. US median per-capita real income hasn't gone up much since, after a huge rise in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. The US peak was in 1973.
After WW2, the US stood essentially alone as an industrial power. Japan and Europe were in ruins. It took decades for foreign competition to return in a major way. When it did, in the 1970's, the results were catostrophic. The steel and auto industries were nearly wiped out.
Reagan thought that loosening controls on capitalism would restore American competitiveness. Union wages aren't of any use if the factory shuts down.
Whether it really worked for the economy as a whole is debatable but, at least for a time, it did seem improve the competivness of American businesses.
Socialism seemed to be failing against foreign competition so policy became more laissez faire.
Unfortunately, the economy is now even more complicated. American goods don't just compete with foreign goods. American labor competes with foreign labor in service of American based companies.
American companies thrive but employees and the wider society no longer benefit.
Capitalism is supposed to harness monetary greed for the greater good of society. Unfortunately, deregulation and globalisation has permited the engine of capitlism to slip its harness.
Socialism is still not competive so I think we are stuck with some sort of capitalism. Further loosening the reigns is a non-starter. Release the horse from the wagon and it may indeed run faster but the wagon won't move at all. We need a new harness. I wish I knew what it was.
Before seat belts were mandatory the many who died from crashes died quickly instead of living to suffer long and slow recoveries?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Capitalism make you as a slave. You see the result now: - people in Africa die and nobody want to help them - USA waging wars for oil etc. This is madness.
Recipes for USA bankrupt - http://tinypaste.com/0d66f dd = dollar deluge (printed in the infinity)
The problem here is that the US economy is not a capitalistic market.
The ills that people are seeing in today's economy stem from the Corporatism underlying our economy and Capitalism is taking the blame.
The solution for this is not to leave capitalism for socialism, communism or ant other ideology, but to eliminate the real problem, and allow true capitalism a chance to show itself.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul665.html
This is based on people's responses that I've read in SD so far. Consider this my rebuttal.
A) Captialism is NOT the "conglomeration of power by a wealthy few". It is an econmic system by which winners and losers are chosen by the buyers based on the performance of the seller's products and services. Ultimately, who "wins" in capitalism is determined by the seller based on QA issues, market timing, demand, etc.
B) The United States is NOT a "democracy". It is a Constitutional Republic. A true democracy would require that all citizens have an equal vote in the passing or failure of anything that is to be enacted (such as a law or the building of a bridge, etc.) without the need of representatives. True democracy is more like "mob rule" which is why it is not practiced.
C) Though Marx's Communism was designed to eliminate class through the idealism that everyone should contribute to the fabric of their society for the good of the society, Communism (in and of itself) would require the suppression of human natures (i) desire for gain, (ii) fear of loss, and (iii) jealousy. In order to suppress to human nature, laws would have to be created. When such laws are created, humans are relegated to being little more than drones under the threat of prosecution. People are only good at being drones to the extent that it benefits them, e.g., I'll be a drone for my employer if I am getting paid enough to satisfy my desired lifestyle. But, as soon as I feel that my lifestyle (or needs) are threatened, I lose the my already thin desire to be a drone and become disatisfied. To prevent me from being too disatisfied for too long and influencing others, the government will need to suppress me for fear that I will disrupt the "ideal society". THIS is why Marx's Communism has never been practiced and the Soviet Union's form of totalitarian Communism has been in practiced in multiple countries. Captialism is not good or bad. Money is not good or bad. Hell, even Communism is not good or bad. None of these systems work without people. It is PEOPLE who can be good or bad, and predicting who the bad one are is impossible. Thus, the more a system forces people to function in society in a way that is contrary to their own human nature, the more the government is requires to suppress those people to maintain order.
D) Fear is what is killing the U.S. economy now. People are afraid to spend. Employers are afraid to hire. Investor are afraid to fund projects. This fear has been perpetuated recently by the actions of only one entity ~ the U.S. Government and its massive spending after our president was elected based on [what has turned out to be] a bunch of empty promises and mismanagement of resources.
E) No socioeconomic structure (Communism, socialism, capitalism) can fix an economy if the government is abusing power and working to enrich itself. Whereas Communism would seek to suppress the people who speak out against the government, capitalism would at least allow people do what the felt they had to do (within the law) to earn more money.
F) Capitalism doesn't require that you have educated citizens to work, nor does it "allow" or "force" corporations to lie through advertising. Capitalism (as a concept) doesn't care about those things. Capitalism only allows people to make a lot of money from selling a lot of products and services. The laws that protect [uneducated] people from fraudulent advertising practices are a result of society's demands of their government to prevent fraud, and such laws exist in capitalist, socialist, and Communist societies, alike.
You can't throw people in jail if they committed no crime. Both bankers and homeowners who caused this mess only crime was making a poor financial decision.
So you just didn't bother reading the rather important part of the sentence that stated:
activity they did that runs counter to some fraud law
or you just don't let facts get in the way of ranting?
And yes every "homeowner" who took out a stated income loan (OK not every, some people actually do use such loans legitimately - but during the boom it was the minority) should be charged with mortgage fraud or with tax evasion depending on whether it was the mortgage or the tax return they lied on. Every homeowner who took out more than one "this is my primary residence" should be up on fraud charges. But of course we can't put the entire states of California and Arizona in prison... It would also collapse housing prices to reasonable levels, but the government wants to keep housing too expensive for people to afford apparently.
Some people who caused the problems will get bailed out, but it is part of the costs of stimulating the economy. If it results in more jobs, then it will be a net win.
That's a really bad metric. It doesn't matter what jobs? How about the government bails out the fast food industry and funds it by taxing the tech industries at 110%. I'm pretty sure you'll get more burger flippers than you will engineers for the money after all. And clearly the government is the best at allocating such resources most efficiently.
Nationalizing the financial system is not a realistic solution and doesn't solve the problem. Corporations will asks for special favors from the government who has little incentive to minimize risks. Voters will want cheap loans and the government will give them to people who don't deserve it.
Which is why you don't keep it nationalized for long - you know like a said in the posts you don't bother reading. And the government already arranges for such loans anyway, so there's no change anyway (other than bankers not getting a risk free cut of course).
Saw your journal entry about you getting modded into the ground.
I tried to help a brother out. ;-)
+1
+1
+1
+1
+1
Thanks! I don't like the moderation system here specifically because there are 'super' moderators.
Also if I was designing one, I would allow anybody moderate any story with say a maximum of 2 points even if they post in the story.
Maximum of 2 points, but also, if one comment becomes too controversial, like it gets moderated up and down, up and down, I would keep it moderated up and then lock it from any further moderation. Clearly people disagreeing on a comment like that means it's at least worth a discussion and not to be shut out.
Also I think I would allow people to trade moderation. Why not? Have a moderator point exchange! This would be interesting, could even buy moderator points for real money :)
Thanks though, I was getting killed indiscriminately.
You can't handle the truth.
Austrian school economists have been warning the world of the dangers of the Keynesian economics practiced by "mainstream" economists for generations now. It looks like we're heading for the "crack-up boom" they predicted
The Euro is a pseudo-gold standard for all the countries that are involved in it. And it only took 10 years for the inevitable monetary problems to occur.
Austrians, just like the modern neoliberal mainstream economists (so called keynesians as well as conservatives) seems to lack in their understanding of how monetary systems work and effect economics. Their failure to understand just manifest in different ways.
Take Cassio's lament about his reputation from Othello, and how important your resume is, and how much time people spend gossiping, trying to size people, up, etc. It seems to me that all of these things could be made a lot simpler.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.181750-Professor-Abandons-Grades-for-Experience-Points
Or look at the culture of the Dwellers in The Algebraist by Iain Banks, or many other examples from SF.
It seems to me like we will use education to get people involved in life, then use XP or kudos to track their performance. The details would be no more crazily complex than CDO traunches or insurance futures.
And a high amount of welfare seems inevitable as long as our education system is not equal opportunity for all and much more highly respected (not to mention exellent STEM). Just set it up so that as long as you are drawing on state support (aside from as a full-time college student living independently), you can't earn any XP/kudos. No judgement.
hit you up again with another batch this morning.
Actually firms failing, such as Lehman, is the problem because in a modern economy these financial institutions are all deeply interconnected. When one fails, it brings down the others like a house of cards.
This deepness of interconnectedness could result from misjudgment of risk. As the risk is increasing so is the government support for managing that risk, leading to increasing risk. Vicious cycle it is.
So the usual naive pure free market booster solution of "just let it fail" only "works" if by "works" you mean the entire global financial system ceases to function and we are reduced to barter.
It could also mean a widened distribution of assets.
Communist Russia, China, and their derivatives had little to do with Marx. Marx theorized that capitalism would eventually blow itself up as the tension between owners and workers finally got too great. He never theorized that you could skip right over the capitalism step, as the communists figured they could do. Whether he was right about what would follow capitalism is still unknown, but the internal contradictions of the system are obvious now.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
how's the karma looking?
j