Karl Marx Shrugged?

nesf

Ah, another Rozie account, I was wondering about the unreasonableness.

L.R. Weizel permanently banned from Politics and most likely site banned.

Permabear

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brianthebard

donegalfella wrote: »

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Seems you are forgetting about the impact of Malthus, who was writing a good few years before the modern welfare state was ever dreamed up. Out of interest what was Rand's position on Malthusianism?

Valmont

donegalfella wrote: »

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I have and I will but I hope that we get state sponsored wheel chair ramps too.:pac:

Valmont

nesf wrote: »

Ah, another Rozie account, I was wondering about the unreasonableness.

L.R. Weizel permanently banned from Politics and most likely site banned.

Just when I thought I had him backing into a corner! Darn it.

nesf

Valmont wrote: »

Just when I thought I had him backing into a corner! Darn it.

It doesn't work, it just starts going around and around in circles and the abuse starts getting less subtle.

Permabear

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brianthebard

donegalfella wrote: »

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His views encouraged people not to engage in charity, to export peasants and excess population, and to force those who couldn't provide for themselves into prisons (workhouses) instead of providing them with social welfare, alms, etc

I don't know that Rand ever wrote on Malthus—but she would clearly reject his theories of overpopulation, food shortages, and mass starvation. Rand believed that humans were rational beings with an ever-increasing capacity for innovation and scientific discovery. She would have seen us as being able to deal with scarcity by discovering new resources and/or making more efficient use of existing resources so that starvation didn't happen.

Well his opinions on the various forms of growth of population versus food were hugely flawed, but one could say he was an early objectivist no? He certainly didn't believe in giving help to people who couldn't help themselves.

Permabear

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nesf

brianthebard wrote: »

His views encouraged people not to engage in charity, to export peasants and excess population, and to force those who couldn't provide for themselves into prisons (workhouses) instead of providing them with social welfare, alms, etc

He was influential in Government circles rather than the circles that were involved with private charities/initiatives like Mutual Societies and similar I think.

There was quite a bit of principled opposition to him at the time from J. S. Mill et al.

brianthebard

donegalfella wrote: »

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And if the person with the necessary power of human reason is stephen hawking and he can't get into the science building in his uni cause there's no ramp, or can't go to school in the first place because his parents can't afford the massive extra cost of sending him to private school as in your vision, then how will science be advanced?

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Permabear

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nesf

donegalfella wrote: »

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So positivists don't hold that conclusion?

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nesf

donegalfella wrote: »

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Nope, a "(post)positivist" thinks that truth exists, it's just that we can't directly observe it because of the problem of induction ergo the conjectures.

Edit:

The problem for logical positivists (which are what you're thinking of) is that they view any statement that cannot be proven with reference to empirical evidence and meaningless. Which is fairly problematic.

Permabear

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nesf

donegalfella wrote: »

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Give me Hume over Rand any day.


This is fairly important question in economics though, the rejection of positivism was a central tenet of von Mises for instance who Rand (I believe) was a fan of.

HL

I haven't read any of Ayn Rands books so I can't have an opinion on them. It has however always cracked me up that the only two people I know who are mad into her are complete ****. One of them is a flash, arrogant git with a penchant for doing runners on his wife and kids, and then crawling back a few weeks/months later only to do it all again, and the other is a vile little geek who prides himself on how nasty and backstabbing he is. One time we got him to pick up a takeaway for us and when he got back it quickly became apparent that he'd exaggerated the price of everything to pocket some money himself.He was totally unapolegetic and seemed to expect us to be impressed with his cunning. I don't mean for this to be a reflection on Ayn Rand or her works, and I know plenty of lefties that are ****, but maybe her theories do provide a self-justifying philosophical veneer to bad people. Mainly though I just think it's funny.

nesf

HL wrote: »

I haven't read any of Ayn Rands books so I can't have an opinion on them. It has however always cracked me up that the only two people I know who are mad into her are complete ****. One of them is a flash, arrogant git with a penchant for doing runners on his wife and kids, and then crawling back a few weeks/months later only to do it all again, and the other is a vile little geek who prides himself on how nasty and backstabbing he is. One time we got him to pick up a takeaway for us and when he got back it quickly became apparent that he'd exaggerated the price of everything to pocket some money himself.He was totally unapolegetic and seemed to expect us to be impressed with his cunning. I don't mean for this to be a reflection on Ayn Rand or her works, and I know plenty of lefties that are ****, but maybe her theories do provide a self-justifying philosophical veneer to bad people. Mainly though I just think it's funny.

Nah, it's more that people who want to be pricks will generally find something to justify it with, be it Rand or whatever.

DadaKopf

Ayn Rand wrote:

Laissez-faire capitalism is the only social system based on the recognition of individual rights and, therefore, the only system that bans force from social relationships. By the nature of its basic principles and interests, it is the only system fundamentally opposed to war.

I'd seriously question the validity of this assertion.

As I said on another thread just this evening:

Historically, the 'free market' (not identitical with the philosophy of libertarianism but actual-existing [aborted] libertarianism) was and continues to imposed through the use of force, usually by the state. Read the classic, 'The Great Transformation' by Karl Polanyi.

Polanyi, in his analysis, goes further to say that the destructive forces of liberal capitalism (within a liberal framework; indeed, liberal ideology and capitalism emerged together) require regulation, intervention and coercion to keep its core elements in place: the profit principle and private property ownership.

Just as the 'free market' was first achieved through actions such as Britain's 'Opium War' with China, more recent history also shows that free markets are the product of force. ... Iraq is, of course, an extreme real-world example of this logic at play.

[L]ibertarianism (and its economic sister, neoliberal economics) as it currently exists is a utopian dream used to justify the abuse of power, and dependent on the use of force to control popular discontent through direct use of force but also to engineer consent through tactics backed up with the eventual use of force by the state.

By the way, Polanyi wasn't a Marxist.

By the way, I feel it's perfectly legitimate for Mad Finn to be responding to Rand's advocates which he has first-hand experience speaking to/reading. The same goes for Marxists (though I dislike the term). It's important to understand texts in their own terms, but the important thing for all of us is how they are interpreted today. Rand and Marx are dead, it's people today who make the actions on the basis of their interpretations of these texts that matters because it's human action that changes the world, not some words on a page.

There's a lot of reactionary emotionalism on this thread.

She's merely arguing that the principles of individual freedom and self-interest, consistently and rigorously applied, can bring about peace, prosperity, and happiness for all.

That's what that's what the engineers of the global financial system thought too. What was that Alan Greenspan recently admitted to? That his 'basic assumptions underpinning the way the world works' were wrong? The modern financial sector, monetarist economics etc. were underpinned by this hubristic idealism. And how many people have now been impoverished by this phony belief?

In it, Beito shows how the services and assistance that we now think of as "social welfare" were once provided through the free and voluntary cooperation of private citizens. It's a convincing argument for how elective group enterprise can fulfill social needs for support and security, without the intervention of government.

There's an argument that in a more complex society, there is greater need to provide a uniform standard of services to citizens that are also accountable under checks and balances. Those services can themselves be differentiated and flexible to meet different citizens' needs. This also implies a certain moral, humanitarian framework. I also think you're wrong. Ireland, being a case in point, has a welfare state and many, many charities. I should know, I work in the charity sector. Another reason you're wrong: the USA has a massive bureaucracy but not what you would call a large welfare state by European standards; nonetheless, social capital and various forms of social associational life including the number of charities have been declining since the 1950s.

Goods and services would cost less, since there would be no taxes and greater competition.

What would prevent the formation of monopolies or cartels which would undermine this theory?

I would indeed argue that many forms of socialism are of the utopian variety and I would seriously question their realism for it.

Some people just don't understand the purpose of utopian ideas. The mistake is when people think utopia is an achievable reality. Some of the most lethal utopians of all are the Chicago boys with their neoliberal monetarist economics. Utopia means 'no place' - which means, 'not now' and 'never'.

But this is exactly the classical retort to any defense of anything vaguely left wing.

"Oh but they WERE Marxist".

Every goddamn thread has some clever dick quoting "oh but that wasn't real Marxism".

Tell you what, come around my house, and I'll make you a cup of coffee. It'll actually be instant gravy with milk and sugar, but you can't bitch about it, since I set out to make something a bit like coffee and it'd be just too convenient if you not liking my coffee was because it was actually gravy.

You totally misunderstand the very basis of a 'Marxist' (again, don't like the term) ontology and epistemology. The marxist tradition actually accepts the impossibility of utopianism; it actually accepts the two-way relationship between theory and practice (you have a theory, bits of it don't work when put into practice, you change theory, try again, and so on). So many anti-Marxists build up a straw man when it bears little resemblance to the reality of the tradition. I agree that saying 'ah, but that wasn't real marxism' is not an excuse to hide behind. And while Marx certainly made errors in his own theory (his positivism was one example, until he revised that position), Marxism is actually a tradition which is constantly revised as the world changes. Which is how all social sciences work, including the moribund economics. Now, the terrible things people did in the name of communist liberation should never be forgotten as dark moments in the history of man.

And finally: an observation. Reading the philosophy of Alain Badiou, I'm reminded that at major historical moments like this, people become divided into extreme camps. I wish it doesn't happen, but sometimes things become so bad, that truth comes into such sharp focus that there is no option. In this thread, there seems to be three groups of people: righties, lefties, and muddle-minded people. But really, picking up the messages from the ether, we're lurching to a more bifurcated ideological moment. It's the 'logic of the event' as Badiou might say. So it's amusing that sales of Capital and Atlas Shrugged are skyrocketing. Though, at least Capital is an actual rigorous work of philosophy and political economy and not a fantastical, post-adolescent rant.

Anyway, just some thoughts!

nesf

DadaKopf wrote: »

That's what that's what the engineers of the global financial system thought too. What was that Alan Greenspan recently admitted to? That his 'basic assumptions underpinning the way the world works' were wrong?

Eh, not really. He held a view that profit maximising firms would be held to account to shareholders which would limit excessive risk taking because of the potential of damage to share value and dividends. This is the view that was proved wrong, shareholder oversight might actually have the opposite effect.

DadaKopf wrote: »

Some people just don't understand the purpose of utopian ideas. The mistake is when people think utopia is an achievable reality. Some of the most lethal utopians of all are the Chicago boys with their neoliberal monetarist economics. Utopia means 'no place' - which means, 'not now' and 'never'.

The problem with utopian ideas is the danger that someone gets it into their head that this is how the world should be. It's been the cause of immense amounts of suffering (on both sides of the political spectrum).

DadaKopf wrote: »

And finally: an observation. Reading the philosophy of Alain Badiou, I'm reminded that at major historical moments like this, people become divided into extreme camps. I wish it doesn't happen, but sometimes things become so bad, that truth comes into such sharp focus that there is no option. In this thread, there seems to be three groups of people: righties, lefties, and muddle-minded people. But really, picking up the messages from the ether, we're lurching to a more bifurcated ideological moment. It's the 'logic of the event' as Badiou might say.

We talked about this a few months ago (I think) that we were looking at a shift back towards the centre/left after the movement to the right since the 80s. Are we doomed to such a cycle? Are we as a group simply destined to be scared like rabbits caught in a headlight and just run to the other side of the road for safety until that doesn't suit any more?

DadaKopf wrote: »

So it's amusing that sales of Capital and Atlas Shrugged are skyrocketing. Though, at least Capital is an actual rigorous work of philosophy and political economy and not a fantastical, post-adolescent rant.

Capital as a piece of economic theory is just wrong and outdated. People would be far better off getting their ideas from something that takes into account the fact that people have social mobility now (if you remove social mobility and have something like the serf system of old Russia then his work is far more applicable).

Not that I don't have huge problems with major parts of the modern economic canon or anything.

asdasd

he marxist tradition actually accepts the impossibility of utopianism; it actually accepts the two-way relationship between theory and practice (you have a theory, bits of it don't work when put into practice, you change theory, try again, and so on).

YOu should tell that to actual Marxists in the West. It is true that the communist party of China has changed practice recently, and changed it's view ofwhat it considers Marxism to be fairly pro-capitalist, but were Marxists in the West to learn this they would become reformists, and lose the name of Marxism. This has happened to individual Marxists, and even to Marxist parties ( i.e. post Berlin Wall) but it generally causes a split - the "real" Marxists stay in their rump sectarian outfits carrying the true touch against reformists, and the reformists stop calling themselves Marxists. So Marxism does grow, but as it grows it fails to be Marxist.

So what do Marxists believe - that the proletariat should own the means of production, and private property be abolished. That's not simplistic. That is it. They don't believe in a social democratic market economy because we have that.That's what they want to overthrow.

This Marxist system ( I find the term Stalinist less than useful) has been tried across al continents,across most cultures, and in carrying degrees of imposition; from Hungary's social market which allowed some enterprise to Pol Pot ( who was, by the way a proper student of Marxism as it was then taught in the West c.f. Althusser etc.). The more market orientated the imposition the freer.

Marxists love these societies when existent - even today Cuba is eulogised. When the system fails they blame it on "State Capitalism" which is actually a description of what they want in the first place: the State to own the means of production.

Ask an "anti-Stalinist" Marxist what he would do different, and the answer is generally kill less people. Nice sentiment, but I mean economically what would you do differently?

The answer is nothing. Marxists support the takeover by the State of private industry, and whine about that exact same economic system by describing it as State Capitalism when it inevitably fails.

cavedave

asdasd

The answer is nothing. Marxists support the takeover by the State of private industry, and whine about that exact same economic system by describing it as State Capitalism when it inevitably fails.

What happens in a marxist system when the means of production (capital) gets really cheap? Its hard for a wool spinner to compete with a factory and from this I believe the justification for the spinners taking over the factory comes from.

But what happens if the means of production costs the average weekly wage? Put it this way when a 17 year old with a 200 euro computer really can make a very high income how are the owners of the capital going to go about oppressing her?

asdasd

But what happens if the means of production costs the average weekly wage? Put it this way when a 17 year old with a 200 euro computer really can make a very high income how are the owners of the capital going to go about oppressing her?

Exactly. In fact most workers could own the means of production in most jobs now, since the means are mostly a computer, and software ( not just for IT, but for Architects, Office workers, traders, accountants, etc.). In fact, when we do work from home ( as many do) the means of production are owned by us - unless we got a computer to work on at home.

Don't expect 19th century theories to be cognisant of this, however.

DadaKopf

What happens in a marxist system when the means of production (capital) gets really cheap? Its hard for a wool spinner to compete with a factory and from this I believe the justification for the spinners taking over the factory comes from.

Of course it's a good question. It's a very important question. A question that requires new analysis. Since the marxian analysis of capitalism is that it's a social relation, the influence that these technologies have on that in respect of human freedom, social justice and equality are what guide the analysis.

In fact most workers could own the means of production in most jobs now

This just isn't factually true. In some respects, it's the case, but 'most workers'? In a highly complex society? Like the billions living in the developing world? Just no.

Don't expect 19th century theories to be cognisant of this, however.

Well, duh. The world has changed. Why do you (and opponents of marxian ideas) keep doing this? It's pure laziness to cast an entire alternative critique of the world by pretending it's never advanced beyond one book written in the 1800s? Oh, I know why, because it's an easy way for people like you to not engage with it in the first place. I mean, I don't expect Ricardian economics to be congnisant of new stuff that didn't exist in his time. You know, like the way Plato said some pretty cool stuff, but I don't expect him to be cognisant of advanced astronomy.

asdasd

Oh, I know why, because it's an easy way for people like you to not engage with it in the first place.

I clearly engaged with modern Marxism. I pointed out that reform marxism does not exist, if it did it would reject essential Marxist precepts ( of which the ownership of the means of production is one), and stop being Marxist. i also pointed out that Marxists who "grow up" cease to stay Marxists. In short, and I really dont think i should have to spell this out, if you are not economic Marxists anymore then what are you.

A marxist can no more accept the existing structures of social democracy then a right-wing intellectual can reform anarcho-capitalism to prove that Sweden is the best model of anarcho-capitalism.

That's impossible. It does not compute.

Marxists have to believe in the extension of the State into all areas of what is now private enterprise, but the middle ground ( a large state with private enterprise) is what we have already. It is what Sweden has in spades. And Sweden has Marxist groups who want to overthrow Swedish democracy and capitalism.

If you have some other economic order which you would define os Marxist. please tell.

Well, duh. The world has changed.

Indeed, it has. And Great Prophet Marx predicted none of it, despite have a "scientific" analysis of how the future would inevitably unfold.

Marxism is not a shy, retiring, private belief system. Maxists claim to have a scientific methodology ( all of which is fasifable, and falsified in theory and practice) and claim to want to remake the world. When the world is remade they claim that that particular version is not what they want.

But lets turn it to you. What would a Marxist Ireland look like. Who owns the farms and factories, what happens to small businesses?

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Nodin

8 pages in, but still no mention of volunteer firemen...could this be a record for a Rand thread?

cavedave

Is there a godwins law for firemen and rand?

Next up on the cliches is private lighthouses. And bees.