Marx May Have Had a Point 1271
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.
Nothing to surprising (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think everyone agreed that they were acceptable, I think that the wealthy agreed that it was more profitable.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet under communist rule there are still wealthy power brokers who know how to game the system for their own profit.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
In Capitalism, Man exploits Man.
In Communism, it's the other way around.
Attribution: (Score:5, Informative)
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I like another quote of his better:
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
The author identifies the fundamental flaw with Marx's theory--he used a false premise. The author here starts a corrected premise and proceeds to give a very interesting history lesson, one which applies quite strongly to today's economic environment.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
That blog post has one rather glaring flaw: it fails to analyse why there are debtors and savers in the first place and who actually gets the opportunity to become a saver. In particular, it fails to account for some quite significant economic reasons why some people would be financially unable to save money. TFA has, in my opinion, a better explanation of why debt explosions are inevitable.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
This is technically true, but scale matters. A lot. For someone earning minimum wage, how long will it take them to save enough money to, say, open their own business? Compare that to someone who is earning millions each year.
Even your examples of how to save money reveal your flaws. You mention living with your parents, but what about people whose parents are absent from their lives? You mention giving up some free time to collect cans, but what about those who are already working multiple, minimum wage jobs and don't have any free time to give up? From the sounds of it, you come from a place of privilege (as do I - my family helped pay for college, among other things), and I think that it would do you well to remember that there are some places in the US where people live in abject poverty and have very minimal options.
The blog that you reference makes some interesting points about the merits of spending vs. saving, but trying to cram all of history and economics into this simple divide is naive at best and dangerously foolish at worst. The danger comes from the inherent assumption that all people in poverty are there through their own laziness and "debtor" mentality.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
BS. Anyone who has cash flow can save money. Or they are dying of starvation. The likelihood of someone having literally only exactly enough to "survive" is practically zero. One can ALWAYS sacrifice current consumption for future gain. Whether that means eating rice instead of bread, or living with your parents instead of your own apartment, or making extra effort to pick up discarded cans for recycling (sacrificing leisure time).
Do a little experiment. Get the minimum wage figures, and figure out how much you get per month. Assume you pay no taxes, since theoretically you're getting all of that back anyway at the end of the year. Find out what it costs to rent a really, really cheap place in your area. In a horrible neighborhood. I'm talking about what it requires for you to have basic shelter, where the only requirements are electricity (need to store food in a refrigerator), and indoor plumbing (you can't hold a job if you can't shower). Determine how much it would cost to pay for that electricity and water. Assume bare minimums here, just take a non-zero value. Determine how much food costs, and for the sake of argument, this person lives on ramen alone. Eats nothing else. You may also assume that this person lives within walking distance of where they work, so they will have no transportation costs. This person never spends any money on entertainment, they will never become unemployed, they will never become sick (otherwise we'd have to factor in health insurance, and that'd definitely break the budget).
Turns out that depending on where you live, minimum wage won't even cover the rent for that shack in a bad neighborhood. In other places, you might be able to determine that there's some money left over after my minimum living requirements stated above. If that's the case, I want you to calculate how much they will have saved after 50 years of working (you can assume their salary follows inflation, so keep all costs the same for all 50 years). That means they started working at 20 and retired at 70. Assume they've invested in the stock market and got a steady 10% growth every single year. You might be surprised to find that investments [xkcd.com] don't yield as much as you think they do.
Even assuming these ideal conditions, I guarantee you that the result will be that they won't have enough money saved over to last them and 20 years of life, living in the same poor conditions. I know this from experience. I'm not a debtor, but I lived my childhood as one. My parents weren't skilled enough to get high paying jobs, and there wasn't enough left over to save. We weren't starving, but that doesn't mean that sometimes we wouldn't have to do that 1-2 day fast until payday came along and we could buy food again. My parents were, however, smart enough to explain to me the value of an education, so that I wouldn't be in the same situation. With what I earn today, I find that it's rather easy to save for retirement, even as I send my parents some extra money every month to help out since they had a grand total of 20k saved in a 401k and social security isn't enough to fill in the gap.
I find that people who believe what you do have always been in the same situation as I am, where it's always easy to save some extra money by not buying that new iPad thingy. You see other people who earn the same as you do being financially irresponsible and you assume that's the reason EVERYONE has for not doing as well as you do. Financial irresponsibility can ruin you regardless of your income, I agree. However, a minimum income is required before financial responsibility is even an option.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
Will get you kicked out of that 270 square foot apartment - not to mention that there's barely room for the beds.
Dead, only child, parents lived in an apartment.
4 USD in 1980 equals 10.44 USD in 2010. By comparison the Federal minimum wage is 7.25 USD, and Washington has the highest minimum wage of 8.67. In other words, in 2010 dollars, you made between 20 and 44 percent more than minimum wage.
Now cut that paycheck between the aforementioned 20 and 44. Assuming you only worked 40 hours a week back then, you'd now have to work between 48 and 58 hours a week to make the same paycheck, which would cut significantly into your available time for self-improvement.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, if you read Marx's Das Kapital (which it certainly sounds like you haven't) you'll discover that the major thrust of Marx's argument is that under a capitalist economy with completely unfettered markets, wealth gets concentrated in the hands of a few capitalists by effectively stealing value from workers. The reason for this is that if a worker has no money and nothing of value to sell except their own labor, then that worker has 2 choices:
1. Work at a wage that is below the true value of their labor, but no less than the minimum amount needed to keep that worker alive, or
2. Die of starvation, illness, or exposure.
Now, here's the question: Is the worker making the choice to take that below-value wage really making a free choice?
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because communism has never been tried. A communist regime in the model that Marx was pushing hasn't ever been implemented. Marx wanted a state like the US, except where the people owned all of the shares of the companies they worked for rather than random investors. And where there was only one class.
To date there has been precisely zero countries where they did away with class and where the workers truly owned the means of production.
The level of ignorance that people express about how it's been tried and failed just boggles my mind, when it hasn't even been tried once.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
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In the same way that capitalism has been tried and failed because you can't remove greed from the human condition.
No, that's totally wrong. Capitalism (free markets in their most-free form) actually recognizes and utilizes greed to promote the system. It's greed and profit motive that drives and motivates the producers in the system. The winners are the ones that can satisfy the needs of consumers expending the least resources to do so.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:4, Interesting)
I think that your comment highlights a key weakness of capitalism. In practice, government is not operated independently of business and the politicians in charge of regulating business (minimally, in the ideal case) are also trying to look out for their own best interests. I'd argue that in such a system, the only two negotiable instruments are, ultimately, money and power. Under such circumstances, corruption is inevitable. The wealthy and the influential will collude. leaving the middle and lower classes (those with minimal money and power) out of the conversation. They key question that capitalism must address, in my opinion, is how does a society prevent the wealthy and the influential from colluding, to the detriment of everybody else?
Political term limits might be one way to start. Restrictions on corporate political activism might be another. (I'm sorry; corporations are not people and should not enjoy "free speech" in the same manner as a human citizen.) Of course, either method could backfire. Term limits might induce politicians to grab what they can, while they can. Restrictions on corporate political activism might just drive it underground. I don't have a great answer to the problem but I think it's one to which a lot of attention should be devoted.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
In the same way that capitalism has been tried and failed because you can't remove greed from the human condition.
In capitalism the greed is meant to be used as a balancing factor. Sure one man is a greedy fucker who will abuse all of his workers to death ... but ... there are 1000 greedy workers with less 'power' but just as much greed, and they'll do things to balance it out ... like vote.
Communism pretends humans aren't humans.
Capitalism uses human nature against human nature as a moderator.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this isn't quite right. Marx believed that you could transform man's greed for material wealth into greed for something else, not that it could be eliminated.
Marx, being a Hegelian, believed that man's psychology could be altered through social changes; he thought that changes in social structure could create corresponding in the peoples' incentive structure. Thus, in a successful Marxist state as Marx envisioned it, peoples' greed for gold would be replaced with a zeal for contributing to society (and, perhaps, greed for the social recognition that would come from those contributions). So, in a way, a successful communist system would be as much driven by greed as a capitalist one.
It may not be possible, of course, to modify peoples' incentives in this way, though it's never truly been tested since the prerequisite social structure has never actually been created (and I don't think it's accurate to say he "assumed" that they could; it was certainly something he explicitly argued for). It doesn't seem crazy on its face, though, that people can be conditioned socially to value something other than material wealth.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Blaming greed on the collapse of a system is like blaming gravity on the collapse of a bridge. In both cases they are permanent conditions they have to be factored into the design of the system.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
It has been tried but not under the term Communism. There was a form of primitive Communism in the Bible read the book of Acts. So yes Christianity and socialism are very compatible.
Acts 2
44: And all that believed were together, and had all things common; 45: And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.
Acts 4
32: And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common. 33: And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all. 34: Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, 35: And laid them down at the apostles' feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need. 36: And Joses, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas, (which is, being interpreted, The son of consolation,) a Levite, and of the country of Cyprus, 37: Having land, sold it, and brought the money, and laid it at the apostles' feet.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Informative)
It was voluntary, not state mandated. Communes and Kibbutz in Israel also function well, and are "communistic". However people are kicked out for not doing what they are able, and everyone is responsible for everyone else. The problem with state mandated communism is that it necessarily is abusive of power, or sufficiently weak that it doesn't work.
Expectations of work, and the condition of expulsion of those that are able, but refuse to work allow for Communes and Kibbutzes to function. A large state cannot function in that manner.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like some kind of cult.
Yep. In fact many modern intentional communities [ic.org] work this way. It can work because you aren't going to screw your neighbors when you live, work and sleep all within a few blocks. Many of these communities are also run by consensus instead of having a hierarchy or authority figure. The problems you see with "communism" at the state level don't emerge until you have a community large enough so that there are "strangers". People will willingly screw a stranger. I've heard that this starts to happen when you get 150 people in the community. In other words, communism doesn't scale.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish I could mod you up right now...
I'm so sick and fucking tired of the Communist bashing that goes on even to this damn day in the US. Communism hasn't failed mankind, mankind has always failed Communism. The true question is whether or not a society will mature enough that it's people do not constantly want to posses more of whatever goddamn thing they see than their neighbor. As long as there is that one selfish dickface that just has to hoard bread, or money, or whatever else he gets his hands on, Communism fails. It depends on people acting honorably.
I have faith in humanity that eventually we will get to that point, but I'm not gonna sit here and say it will never happen as a justification for my own greed. We get enough of that as it is. Enough with the Randian bullshit. Just say "I want more than your neighbor because fuck him" and be honest with yourself and others. At least we'll know who not to piss on when they're on fire...
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish I could mod you up right now...
I'm so sick and fucking tired of the Communist bashing that goes on even to this damn day in the US. Communism hasn't failed mankind, mankind has always failed Communism. The true question is whether or not a society will mature enough that it's people do not constantly want to posses more of whatever goddamn thing they see than their neighbor. As long as there is that one selfish dickface that just has to hoard bread, or money, or whatever else he gets his hands on, Communism fails. It depends on people acting honorably.
An economic system that only works if every person acts ideally at all times is a recipe for mass graves.
Capitalism, for all its imperfections, is built on self-interest. It expects people to be people, not ants. So it works.
Communism doesn't; never has, never will.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Informative)
It expects people to be people, not ants.
No. It expects people to be able to act rationally and in their long-term best interest. That's still not how people work.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:4, Interesting)
> That's because communism has never been tried. A communist regime in the model that Marx was pushing hasn't ever been implemented.
Oh please. Have you even _read_ the Communist Manifesto or even know what "allodial title" means??
I'll repeat them here for your benefit ...
1. "Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of wastelands, and the improvement of the the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries, gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form."
And quoting the excellent analysis ....
- - - 8http://www.buildfreedom.com/tl/wua11.shtml
1. Abolition of Property Rights.
U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8: The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises. (Taxes on things, including property.)
Zoning laws and regulations - the Supreme Court ruled zoning constitutional in 1921.
Federal ownership of land; Bureau of Land Management - in Nevada 87% of land is federally owned.
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) - broad powers to seize any private property during "emergency."
Communist percentage: 25%.
2. Heavy Progressive Income Tax
U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8: The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises. (Taxes on things, including income.) The Sixteenth Amendment classifies income tax as an indirect tax, or tax on a thing, as opposed to tax on a person.
Corporate Tax Act of 1909.
Revenue Act of 1913.
Social Security Act of 1936.
Communist percentage: 85%. (Maybe 15% of the population don't pay the taxes.)
3. Abolition of Rights of Inheritance
U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8: The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises. (Taxes on things, including inheritances.)
Estate Tax Act of 1916.
Social Security Act of 1936.
Communist percentage: 30%.
4. Confiscation of Property of Emigrants and Rebels
Confiscation of property of American Indians.
IRS confiscation of property without due process.
Internment of Japanese-Americans during WW II; confiscation of their property.
Confiscation of drug-merchant property.
RICO Act of 1970 (Racketeering Influenced & Corrupt Organizations) - used as a basis to confiscate property.
Communist percentage: 20%.
5. Monopoly National Bank
U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8: The Congress shall have the power to coin money, r
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Funny)
Marx also breathed air.
Our congress breathes air.
Communist percentage: 100%.
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It's possible to set up a company structure that is, by definition of the company bylaws, owned by its workers. They would own a "share" of the company in a definitional sense, but not in the sense of a stock certificate that they can sell or take with them when they quit the company. In some countries the law provides special status for cooperatives that enables that sort of thing.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
> It's possible to set up a company structure that is, by definition of the company bylaws, owned by its workers.
> They would own a "share" of the company in a definitional sense, but not in the sense of a stock certificate
> that they can sell or take with them when they quit the company.
That would suck ass if you bothered to actually THINK about the implications. Lets imagine an attempt to do this.
We begin with 100 unemployed workers who happen to have a bit of capital saved up. Each contributes $10,000US into an account and a corporation is chartered along the lines you suggest. Each investor receives one share with a special condition that they must be an employee to maintain possession of their share. They invest in a small abandoned factory and begin bringing it up to make the infamous 'unspecified widget.' At the first meeting the duly elect a board of directors and a CEO from among their number to meet the legal requirements of incorporation and elect the rest of the initial management.
Problems set in almost instantly when one of the peeps wants to buy a house and finds that no bank will accept their stock as collateral because of the special restriction on the ownership. Out of a hundred people the odds are quite good that one will die in the first year. How to deal with inheritence? Does the next of kin have to take the job to inherit? Does the company buy out the share? When a new employee is hired does he have to buy a share as a condition of employment?
Now imagine that the company has somehow survived the above problems for a few years and prospered. How does an employee reap the benefit of his invested capital short of retiring? In light of this, why would anyone invest in such a venture in the first place vs investing in the more liquid traditional market?
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Informative)
You're trying to argue that gravity falls up. It's a nice attempt, but ultimately moot, because employee owned companies do exist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_employee-owned_companies [wikipedia.org]
Perhaps you should consider that the challenges you mention are not insurmountable.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
That's true as well. A truly free market degenerates to a monopoly every time. And that's not a free market. Again, it happens for the same reason true communism can never be implemented. Human greed.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no class structure in America
There may not be a codified class structure, but if you're making the assertion that the United States is a lovely fairly-land filled with elves and unicorns that live without any class whatsoever then you are woefully incorrect. There is a massive differential in income between the haves and the have-nots with the bottom 50% controlling 2% of the wealth. We may not have the same rigid caste rules that India used to (for example only) but class mobility is becoming more and more difficult and wealth is becoming more of a legacy passed from generation to generation (new technology notwithstanding).
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah right. The US is one of the most classist states remaining in the world. If you doubt it, run down to Martha's Vinyard sometime.
The only difference is that class in the US is based on money, and how long your family has had it instead of strict hereditity as it was in the old world.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Capitalism, on the other hand, has been tried. It is not working, and never have (I know it's great for growth and accumulation of wealth - it just sucks at liberty, life and the pursuit of happiness).
Bogus claim. If you're going to define Communism is purist theoretical terms and claim it's a system that's never been implemented, then you have to acknowledge that that pure capitalism, as in totally free market, has never really been tried, either.
Even in the nearest implementations of capitalist systems, here have always been government and institutional interventions into the markets in forms like tariffs, product-specific taxes, regional trade restrictions, etc., etc. The last 40 years have seen an ever-increasing amount of interventionist policies, and these have accelerated in the last 10-15 years.
Claiming that this system is evidence of a "failure" of "free markets" is like cutting the legs off of a frog and then claiming "See, look! Frogs can't jump!"
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, capitalism, in the laissez-faire austrian school, has never been tried either. Everything we have today that approximates or is considered capitalist is actually the bastard child mixed economy with both socialist and capitalist features. I posit that either extreme is complete fantasy and the fanboys of both have elevated their respective economic hypothesis' to religion.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
And yet under communist rule there are still wealthy power brokers who know how to game the system for their own profit.
Corruption is corruption, no matter what "wrapper" we put around it. Greed (whether personal or financial) always has been and always will be the Achilles heel of ANY model. Every model will fail if greed and corruption are left unchecked. Again, this should come as no surprise to anyone.
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That because we've never actually seen real communist rule, we've seen fascist rule calling itself communist. I mean, the Nazi party was the National Socialist German Workers' Party but they sure as shit were not socialist.
Seems like we should actually see real communism in action before we dismiss it as being a failure. The question is, will a society ever mature enough and be enlightened enough to actually try it?
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And it does so because there is no democratic government tamplate for:
1. Bring the capitalism;
2. Regulate it in such way that most profit can be gained from doing what's really needed (although we start to see this with tax cuts for less carbondioxide vehicles);
3. (Probably he most important point:) hand out tax money to people that want to start a business that's good for society and while you're at it: don't fscking own it and hand it a monopoly/unfair advantage.
What we really should do is use the least w
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit. Banks loaned to everyone because they sold the mortgages at AAA+ (rated by the agencies paid for them) to somewhere else who were the ones who took the risk, without knowing it.
Found a good article a few years ago at www.csmonitor.com (could not locate it more precisely, sorry) from mortgage agents. They were forced to accept whatever proof of "liquidity" by appliants, if they did not sell enough mortgages to whoever was coming they were just fired. In one story, a man went with a photo in front of a store and just claimed that the store was his, to get his mortgage approved.
BTW, if someone has a link to the article it would be very informative.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
No, that was the government
No, it was the banks. They were the ones who lobbied for regulations to be removed, and they were the ones that performed every fucking action that led to the collapse. They did it with full independence and completely knowing what they were doing. To blame that on government is fucking crazy.
Of course, then I read the rest of your post and realize you're just another one of the extreme crazy right wingers who hates anything on the left, has a completely irrational hatred of government, and has a religious like belief in the "free market".
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:4, Interesting)
There is no way to implement what Marx theorized about. That's the whole point. Once the theory hits the real world, human nature screws it up.
Exactly. Communism is based on the idea that people are willing to give up their own self-interest to advance the collective. This is pretty much like the Prisoner's Dilemma. Even though people may be "educated" to agree with the general principle, when it comes down to individual choices, people tend to do what's best for themselves.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't go so far as to say that. The problem in Marx's case was that none of the states he thought were ready for a Communist revolution did in fact tip over. There were failed revolutions in some European countries, but the rulers got smart and began instituting relatively liberal constitutions, increasing worker protections and other various cries from classical 19th century Liberals and Socialists. The industrialized nations all got the hint pretty fast that if they didn't at least increase standards of living and rebalance the social equation, they would end up with revolutions.
The places that actually fell to Communism, at least in the first wave, were countries that Marx distinctly said were not ready, and that was the largely agrarian societies of Russia and China. In both cases, the revolutionaries literally had to lift up their economies and carry them through to industrialization, which was what the capitalist epoch in classical Marxism was supposed to be for. In essence, Marxism is an industrialized political and economic theory.
There are other problems with Marxism, but I think Marx himself was proven to be a pretty smart guy, even if there were some substantial flaws in his theory. Certainly the Marxist view of history as class struggles has a lot of adherents in the historical and scholarly community, and it's very clear that he did a rather good job of dissecting Capitalism's major flaws. I wouldn't go out and suggest we all adopt Marxist Communism, I don't think it would work at all, but at the same time I think we can take the warnings of out of control capitalism and see the truth in them.
I don't think any particular political or economic theory should exist solely for its means. The idea that we should pursue Capitalism simply for Capitalism's sake is absurd, and I think underlies the flaws in tossing out pragmatism. In certain circles, Capitalism seems almost a religion, much as Leninist Communism and its descendants did in their day. But clearly by allowing vast sums of money, and almost more importantly, vast amounts of economic influence, to accrue to large commercial and corporate interests has lead us down a dark dark path. The whole notion of too big to fail suggests to me that the time has come to perhaps put caps on just how big any given commercial interest, whether it be a corporation, consortium, co-operative or whatever formulation you can imagine can get. Maybe we shouldn't consider mergers or buy-outs beyond a certain size, maybe when companies reach whatever size seems dangerous they should be cut into pieces, in part to foster competition, but also to assure that the collapse of any one entity doesn't become so dangerous as to threaten the underlying economy.
The success of post-War Capitalism was in no small part due to the embedding of what could only be called socialist principles. Yes, we would allow free enterprise, but with controls, and just as importantly we would create a welfare apparatus to assure that those who would inevitably be harmed by the economic system could at least be guaranteed a certain minimum lifestyle. Different nations took this mix in different degrees; in Europe the welfare state took on a larger role, whereas in the United States, it was less overarching, though I would argue every bit as present, though implementation much less even due to constitutional and political constraints. Regardless of how it was instituted, the goal was to create a balance.
What I think we've seen from the wave of deregulation beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s is a tipping of that balance. We've allowed commercial interests to accrue a vast amount of economic influence, to the point where their success or failure substantially impacts the success or failure of whole economies, even the global economy. Suddenly we've been plunged into a whole new form of welfare, nations literally printing or borrowing vast amounts of money just to keep these sputtering engines from dying and taking everything with them. Now we
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Capitalism does too ... Pure Capitalism devolves into brutal dictatorship unless contained by the government it theoretically does not need ...
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:4, Informative)
Funnily enough, that's what Marx was all about too. His approach is characterised as Historical Materialism because it's only concerned with the realities of human nature and things that really happen here, in the material world.
The whole point of Marxism* is to build a political economy that's better/I. than Capitalism. Capitalism is the greatest, most innovative form of political economy devised by mankind but it comes at a terrible price. Marxism is about confronting the reality of the world, which developing a critique of Capitalism in its various forms, and trying to change things for the better.
The only way that struggle can be ultimately resolved is for the working class to gain the consciousness necessary to govern. That change has to come from the bottom up - you can't impose it from above. All attempts to create Socialism from above are doomed to create authoritarian, bureaucratic structures.
Basically, Capitalism as a game is rigged. It rewards making money over performing useful labour (e.g. using knowledge from a medical degree to figure out reasons to refuse insurance payouts rather than using it to treat patients) and results in a world I think most people are clearly unhappy with. The challenge as Socialists is to figure out a better game, a better system of incentives and discouragements to get people doing more useful things.
As to what things are useful, well, that's not a question for one person to answer. It should be decided democratically!
Marx called himself a Humanist. He once said, in reference the the French Marxists with whom he disagreed, "all I know is that I am not a Marxist".
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:4, Interesting)
I am no philosophy type, and I realize that nothing is black and white. My only objection here was comparing the USSR to what Marx wrote about is insane. The USSR and its leaders never intended to put such a system in place or even attempt to. They used these words as a propaganda tool. Just like the "American Dream" is used as a propaganda tool to keep the poor from rioting in the streets when they find out Buffet pays less taxes(percentage wise) than his secretary.
Not if... (Score:3)
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.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
And the law, in its majestic equality, allows the poor as well as the rich to pay lower taxes on stock income vs.a paycheck, deduct the use of any business jet, and have the police show up and actually investigate when a $100,000 piece of art is stolen.
We are all equal under the law.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Who was "we"?
Wealthy capitalists pretty much spent the first half of the twentieth century indoctrinating every western culture they could into believing communism and socialism are capital-E Evil. Some places the propaganda took better than others.
This is a direct factor in why the healthcare debate in the states is so broken. When a good portion of your culture genuinely believes that socialism is absolutely Evil, trying to build a modern system to help them is difficult.
The silly thing is, is that there are huge sections of the US that are entirely funded by tax dollars (and they aren't necessarily what you think [partialobjects.com]), but to ever acknowledge that in public, and to try and make it better, given that it is what it is, is heretical.
Re: (Score:3)
Capitalism is simply economic survival of the fittest. In a laissez-faire economy, its is might that makes right. Problem is, manipulating the markets themselves are just as important as one's actions within a market.
I think it's funny that concepts like patents, trademarks, and copyrights are actually anti-laissez-faire, in that they're outside regulation, yet they're used to hold innovation hostage by the same people who rant about too much regulation.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:4, Interesting)
It's true for both. Communism assumes people are not greedy, capitalism assumes people are rational and informed. Neither are true.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm not sure if society has really accepted them. Many of the excesses were unknown until recently. Now that we're learning that people are receiving excessive rewards for doing damage to the economy, a lot of people find it unacceptable. The problem is, the economic system is mostly in the hands of the people who profit from it, and not in the hands of the people who find it unacceptable. The last few years showed that it's really not so easy to fix the problem.
Of course he had a point (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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. Even a small community eventually sees the inequities build and the exploitation start.
Then again, pure capitalism suffers that fatal flaw as well. The corruption of money and power allow capitalists to exploit people just the same.
And, of course, this problem of money and power going hand-in-hand with corruption is the fatal flaw of
The flaw is central planning is NP hard! (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [mises.org]
Re: (Score:3)
In unregulated capitalism, the power brokers can set the cost of entry so high that people do not have the choice to start their own business. Monopoly power, left unchecked, is no different than the concentrated power of the ruling elite of a communist nation.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Scope of Effect (Score:5, Interesting)
Regulations, schmegulations. The reason small businesses can't compete is because big business has rigged the game to their favor, and the playing field is no longer level.
Re: (Score:3)
Patent laws aren't part of the free market; they're government regulation. More socialist than capitalist.
Maybe more corporate than capitalist. Not socialist though, as that would assume that the government was acting for the benefit of the people rather than corporate lobbyists (and bribe payers).
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Which is why we must exterminate the humans.
Re:Of course he had a point (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but capitalism glorifies it, lionizes, and justifies it. It puts greed at the top of human motivators and forbids us to censure the greediest amongst us. I'm sorry, but when you create a system built on the notion of competition, "every man for himself", and self-involvement, youmetaprogramming are pandering to the worst in human nature. You are saying the bullies aren't just usually going to win, but that it is right that they win. How can we expect any other outcome than the one we have gotten? We made sociopaths into heroes and now lament that they run the show? Seems a bit disingenuous to me.
Wait a second... (Score:3)
Karl Marx's diagnosis of capitalism's ills seem quite bang on the money.
*squint*
I see what you did there...
Evidence Throughout the Ages of This (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
"The abolition of slavery - ensuring human rights is a mistake?"
Wherever did you get the idea he said that? The abolition of slavery is an example of the government regulating free enterprise to protect the people, i.e. socialism. Yes, ensuring human rights is a very socialist thing to do. No, it's not a mistake.
Technology (Score:3)
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.
Technology is just the beginning (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
That's come up in the past, if the government doesn't step in and tell the rich that they have to give back their ill gotten gains, then things are going to get ugly. As technology gets better and productivity improves there's going to be a permanent job shortage. Which wouldn't be a problem if wages would increase so that a person could feed himself and his family on the reduced wages. But that's not happening, people are being expected to take on multiple jobs, and deprive other people of those jobs becau
Re:Technology (Score:4, Informative)
Which wouldn't be a problem if wages would increase so that a person could feed himself and his family on the reduced wages.
Alternatively, we could reduce the cost of feeding. Technology, changes to distribution methods, increases in productivity of all kinds have done precisely that:
Americans paid a high price to support this balkanized system for conveying food from farm to table. Food was hugely expensive, relative to wages. The average working-class family in the 1920s devoted one-third of its bud get to groceries, the average farm family even more. Most households spent more to put dinner on the table than for their rent or their mortgage. And for the average house wife, shopping for food consumed a large part of the day. This money, time, and effort bought plenty of calories, but only moderate amounts of nutrition.
http://www.npr.org/books/titles/139761304/the-great-a-p-and-the-struggle-for-small-business-in-america?tab=excerpt#excerpt [npr.org]
According to the interview with the author (which I heard while driving, and cannot find a transcript), the budget fraction for groceries is now somewhere near 5%.
Meanwhile, the standard of living has continued to rise. We talk about our poor, but what do we really mean by "poor?" Consider http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/07/what-is-poverty [heritage.org]:
As scholar James Q. Wilson has stated, “The poorest Americans today live a better life than all but the richest persons a hundred years ago.”[3] In 2005, the typical household defined as poor by the government had a car and air conditioning. For entertainment, the household had two color televisions, cable or satellite TV, a DVD player, and a VCR. If there were children, especially boys, in the home, the family had a game system, such as an Xbox or a PlayStation.[4] In the kitchen, the household had a refrigerator, an oven and stove, and a microwave. Other household conveniences included a clothes washer, clothes dryer, ceiling fans, a cordless phone, and a coffee maker.
The home of the typical poor family was not overcrowded and was in good repair. In fact, the typical poor American had more living space than the average European. The typical poor American family was also able to obtain medical care when needed. By its own report, the typical family was not hungry and had sufficient funds during the past year to meet all essential needs.
Poor families certainly struggle to make ends meet, but in most cases, they are struggling to pay for air conditioning and the cable TV bill as well as to put food on the table. Their living standards are far different from the images of dire deprivation promoted by activists and the mainstream media.
Long-Term or Short-Term Trends? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Long-Term or Short-Term Trends? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know. Going hungry is about the same no matter what era it is in. Freezing to death under a bridge or in your unheated home isn't really any better in 2011 than it was in the middle ages. Dying from the flu or some other easily treated ailment seems to be just as much of a downer today as it was 40 years ago when such things weren't so easily treated.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that poor people don't do that as much now.
Assuming you are talking about the civilized world of course, you know Australia/New Zealand/Canada/Germany/etc and not the USA where they have made the expicit choice to screw the poor.
Re: (Score:3)
and not the USA where they have made the expicit choice to screw the poor.
Im pretty sure most of the poor here dont starve in the streets either. Im not able to find any specific stats about starvation, but I think there are very very few cases where someone starved because food was hard to get (most cities-- i would hazard "all") have homeless shelters, food handouts, etc; there are food stamps for those with insufficient income; theres unemployment; there are community outreaches, etc.
If I lost my job tomorrow, and someone took all my money, and all of my clothes except some s
Re:Long-Term or Short-Term Trends? (Score:5, Insightful)
Pardon my french, but that's horseshit. Look at housing prices compared to household incomes (which considers that many more households have two wage-earners in them than in the past). Even for modest, smaller homes the cost is several times higher than it was 30 years ago (in terms of wages).
That's part of the problem -- it feeds into the exploitation issue. But in many ways, it's an excuse given for profit-taking by capital. The workers have been conditioned to lick capital's boots, for fear of losing their jobs. Household debt plays into this, since it's one of the anchors that keeps people from rejecting low wages.
Re:Long-Term or Short-Term Trends? (Score:5, Insightful)
Capitalism isn't in itself flawed... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Bakunin (Score:4, Informative)
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.
For sure Marx had a point (Score:4, Insightful)
But identifying a problem is not identical to finding the correct solution.
His examples do not support his point (Score:3)
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).
"See this suspicious looking brown guy? He's a.." (Score:3, Interesting)
"card carrying communist!!"
Given that a suspicious looking brown guy whose political mentor in Chicago was a communist domestic terrorist [nationalreview.com] has been elected President, I think you're safe Haque.
(Let the battle between "+1 Funny" and "-1 Troll" commence!)
Marx was indeed, partly correct (Score:4, Insightful)
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
Re:Marx was indeed, partly correct (Score:5, Informative)
Diversity and feedback (Score:3)
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.
Worst False Consciousness examples ever (Score:4, Informative)
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.
diagnosis: yes. prescription: no (Score:3)
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.
RTFA, Anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Eat The Rich (Score:4, Informative)
I still think P.J. O'Rourke's Eat The Rich [wikimedia.org] 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.
Re: (Score:3)
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.
Notably, we are losing both of those cornerstones in America. Hundreds of billions of dollars were misappropriated in the years leading up to the financial crisis of 2008 and not one person has even been indicted criminally.
The smart way is not absolutist. (Score:3)
But what do I know.
Some notes on Marx and capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
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. [cnn.com] 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.
Globalization distorts both socialism and capitali (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
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.
Re:Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail which resulted in making the financial crisis much worst. It was a test of pure capitalism that failed.
Re: (Score:3)
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.
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The free market is not the panacea that most purist make it out to be either. Every system has its benefits and drawbacks. However, although we may have our industrial and commerce sectors based on corporatism, our financial markets are very close to lassez-faire capitalism, which isn't exactly the shining example that free-market purists make it out to be.
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Marx was EXACTLY right in his diagnosis (Score:3, Interesting)
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 pres