Knowledge Workers of the World: Unite!!!

Mad Finn

The BBC is reporting that with the credit crunch and the apparent discrediting of capitalism, people are finding a renewed relevance in the writings of Karl Marx.

Sales of Das Kapital are rising, it would seem.

Down with hedge fund operators. Death to yuppies. Working for the common good is back in vogue, it would appear.

jhegarty

Yes, because communism worked out well didn't it... especially for the USSR

Run_to_da_hills

Mad Finn wrote: »

The BBC is reporting that with the credit crunch and the apparent discrediting of capitalism, people are finding a renewed relevance in the writings of Karl Marx.

Sales of Das Kapital are rising, it would seem.

Down with hedge fund operators. Death to yuppies. Working for the common good is back in vogue, it would appear.

Read Animal Farm, It's is a novel by George Orwell :rolleyes:

sovtek

jhegarty wrote: »

Yes, because communism worked out well didn't it... especially for the USSR

...and the Chicago School has been worse...for the world.
The USSR and Karl Marx were miles apart.

cavedave

sovtek...and the Chicago School has been worse...for the world.

How so? Has standard of living not improved(with the fairly big exception of problems caused by AIDS)?

Mad Finn

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

Read Animal Farm, It's is a novel by George Orwell :rolleyes:

Is that the one with the line that all capitalists are knob heads but some are bigger knob heads than others?:p


Just alluding to a BBC report, chaps. If sales of Marx are rising, then they're rising. And who says that Marxism must always equate to the soviet union's interpretation of it? After all, capitalism as manifested by the US of A hasn't done a fantastic job over the last year, has it?

cavedave

After all, capitalism as manifested by the US of A hasn't done a fantastic job over the last year, has it?

In comparison to Stalin it has

Gurgle

cavedave wrote: »

In comparison to Stalin it has

But Stalin had nothing to do with communism, other than the mis-use of the word.

mumhaabu

Capitalists Unite, Cut taxes, decrease spending, cut out half the crap in Government, Increase Military spending and decrease welfare. Every man for himself and each to their own.

Karl Marx and Che Guevara = Scum

Kama

Perhaps you should try and liquidate those scum with your increased military spending? :P

brianthebard

Why knowledge workers??

EamonnKeane

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

Read Animal Farm, It's is a novel by George Orwell :rolleyes:

Yes, some guy wrote a book, therefore Marxist political philosophy is evil. Ah, internet logic.

sovtek

EamonnKeane wrote: »

Yes, some guy wrote a book, therefore Marxist political philosophy is evil. Ah, internet logic.

GO also wrote in the forward to Animal Farm that he was talking as much about GB as he was the USSR.

dsmythy

You're making the presumption that they will like what they read.

Rossibaby

cavedave wrote: »

In comparison to Stalin it has

what the hell are you talking about.so you are saying the standard of living has risen therefore thats a good system,lets give you a reality check.

the standard of living for slaves in the 18th century vastly improved in the 19this that an argument for slavery?


stalin oversaw huge economic growth and progression,is that an argument for stalinism?

short answer...no,your logic is flawed and it is also flawed if you think the USSR was a socialist state.no socialist state has ever existed,only countries have claimed the name.when has the workers controled the means of production?never so please marxism has not been implemented therefore people abusing it because of the USSR or cuba are showing themselves up for the fools they are.

cavedave

stalin oversaw huge economic growth and progression,is that an argument for stalinism?

An estimated 14 million Soviet people died from famine in the early 1930s when Stalin collectivized all farming."

If you are going to argue over the merits of a particular political system you need to put down some quality judgments. GDP per person is not a great measure but it is probably the best. It correlates well with happiness measures (up to about 15k a year particularly). But if you would rather pick some other objective measure name it now.

the standard of living for slaves in the 18th century vastly improved in the 19this that an argument for slavery?

You would also have to include some measure of freedom from oppression. Oppressed countries tend to have low GDP's though. Slaves (and the unfree in general) are incentivised to do as little work as possible, you can see this reading Primo Levi or in almost any research into the economics of slavery

short answer...no,your logic is flawed and it is also flawed if you think the USSR was a socialist state

I never claimed the USSR was socialist. But it does seem to be what socialism turned into. I am putting forward a falsifiable hypothesis "Countries with little poverty and individual freedom are better then countries without this, the best way to ensure this is through market means with some government intervention for the unfortunate". If you have evidence against this please present it.

irishbran77

cavedave wrote: »

"Countries with little poverty and individual freedom are better then countries without this, the best way to ensure this is through market means with some government intervention for the unfortunate". If you have evidence against this please present it.

I'm just wondering what modern countries adhere to your above characteristics? And could you provide the evidence for this claim if you believe it beyond simply pointing to most of the West as it's been for the past two decades.

Nodin

Mad Finn wrote: »

The BBC is reporting that with the credit crunch and the apparent discrediting of capitalism, people are finding a renewed relevance in the writings of Karl Marx.

Sales of Das Kapital are rising, it would seem.

Down with hedge fund operators. Death to yuppies. Working for the common good is back in vogue, it would appear.

Though I couldnt be described as a Marxist, its good to see people are questioning the system more. Certainly theres been far too much going along with the status quo for the last decade or more.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

K4t

Just goes to show what a re-active society we live in, from you and I right up to that shower who call themselves the government. :rolleyes:

Sand

There has never been and never will be a text book " socialist " state so while its probably fine to say the USSR was not a text book socialist state in one sense, it is the inevitable result of the state siezing total economic, political and military control - where the rights of the individual are entirely stripped away for the good of the "community". Where all power and patronage springs from the state. Every state that has introduced socialism has descended into a police state nightmare. Even in much vaunted Spain, Orwell claimed to have been very lucky to escape alive - he wasnt in fear of his life from fascists, but from his fellow socialists.

Stalin may not have been a text book socialist, but he was the inevitable creation of the attempt to remove individual rights in Russia. He is the philosopher-kings socialists believe will run everything for everyones best interest. We know we cant trust individuals to make decisions for themselves. How can you expect anything other than dictatorship when all your rights are taken from you?

what the hell are you talking about.so you are saying the standard of living has risen therefore thats a good system,

Nope, just that its a better system than communism. The millions and millions and millions of people who had their standard of living severely curbed by Stalin, Lennin and their followers would certainly claim so.

DadaKopf

That's great. Well before hearing about copies of Capital going through the roof, I made a pact with a friend to read through it. You need to do it as a group. Bought it a couple of months ago, so I did. It's great that people are going back to (beginning to) read a key political, economic and philosophical text. What is contained in Capital, and what emerged after it, are leagues apart. As Marx himself said, "I am not a Marxist!".

My reason for going back to reading Capital was simple. I'd spent too much time reading people (whom I admire) writing about Marx's writings. I also felt that, on all sides, his actual views have been reinterpreted, and misinterpreted. I wanted to go back to basics in relation to what theorists today who I regard as cutting edge. What I'm realising is that, contrary to doctrinaire Marxists (and there remain many, in addition to anti-Marxists who present Marx's arguments in doctrinaire ways in order to score political points), is a very rich, deep, analytical investigation into the nature of the capitalist system as it was in the 1800s. Most of all, one of the telling traits of 'Marxism' is actually an openness to change, that, in fact, Marx wrote about change. This is what he was fascinated with: that in capitalism, everything is movement, when things stop, you don't have capitalism because you do not have exchange. He roots his ideas fundamentally in the processes of history, which is to say the actions of human beings and the ideas they hold, which change, and so too do humans' actions. It is, of course, interesting that those of a liberal capitalist hue frequently point out how outmoded much of Marx's writings are but in the same sentence pontificate about the timeless discoveries of Adam Smith (writing in the 1700s) and David Ricardo, Marx's direct contemporary whose ideas Marx greatly admired.

Perhaps reading Marx was once considered taboo, but now, people are clearly seeing it as proposing some answers. Though I'd agree that the world has moved on since then, and it should not ever be treated as some kind of bible as so many have. Other books on the up, such as Karl Polanyi's 'The Great Transformation' will get more of an airing in the coming years; not a Marxist at all, he identified a historical process whereby at various times in history people or states move to embed the market in society through regulation, and at other times this flips to a phase of disembedding the market as we have seen since the 1970s with neoliberalism. He called it the 'double-movement', and, he believed, it is characteristic of capitalism in Western countries.

DadaKopf

More stuff: that's a really badly written article.

It starts mentioning that sales of Capital are up, 300% apparently. Then it mentions how people are now looking to "Russian Leninist" "economic philosophy", as if Lenin's and Marx's writings are synonymous.

True, Lenin's writings about "uneven development" as a result of capitalism are current; they have been since the 1950s as Chicago-trained economists like André Gunder-Frank (trained by Milton Friedman to boot) began testing these ideas in Latin America, and very influential those ideas became - they underpinned UN anti-poverty policy at the time. In some minor circles, the ideas are also still circulating, for example in the works of Giovanni Arrighi. But, overall, I'm not sure that Lenin and the Leninist project has much currency at all.

It leads me to suspect the motives of the writer of the article.

That said, Hobsbawm's quote at the end I'm fairly in agreement with.

sand wrote:

He is the philosopher-kings socialists believe will run everything for everyones best interest.

Just like the bankers and financial speculators, eh, Sand?

brianthebard

I would say that Lenin's ideas on imperialism might have some value?

gurramok

Sand wrote: »

Every state that has introduced socialism has descended into a police state nightmare.

Yes, the Swedes have had it tough. They are off my must see country along with perhaps the French to visit now, thanks

Sand wrote: »

Nope, just that its a better system than communism. The millions and millions and millions of people who had their standard of living severely curbed by Stalin, Lennin and their followers would certainly claim so.

Yes, those millions(is it 40million at last count?) living poverty in the US agree with you.

The system thats needed is halfway between capiltalism and socialism in my view. Greed is not good.