tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4332582469324010500.post8978720356877854691..comments2024-01-16T12:22:10.415+00:00Comments on We are not the beautiful: The relevance and irrelevance of Marxism. An interview with economist, Harry ShuttWe are not the beautifulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469463466277712732noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4332582469324010500.post-34904974215017348902017-08-22T18:21:39.048+01:002017-08-22T18:21:39.048+01:00The only socialism that central banks propagate is...The only socialism that central banks propagate is socialism for the rich - bailouts, rock bottom interest rates, saving massively indebted corporations, and $12 trillion of Quantitative Easing that makes very wealthy people even wealthier. That strikes me as inverted Marxism. Curiously the most notable central banker in the modern era was a disciple of Ayn Rand, not Karl Marx. 'I do have an ideology' Alan Greenspan said. 'My judgement is that free, competitive markets are by far the unrivalled way to organise economies. We have tried regulation, none meaningfully worked." And he ran the Federal Reserve, the most powerful central bank in the world, for 19 yearsWe are not the beautifulhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12469463466277712732noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4332582469324010500.post-31007313413983465432017-08-20T21:33:29.711+01:002017-08-20T21:33:29.711+01:00Marx was a relatively obscure and unknown figure f...Marx was a relatively obscure and unknown figure for much of his life. The First International gave him some influence among socialists, especially among extremist revolutionaries inspired by the easily read and extremist Communist Manifesto, but he was relatively unknown to the general public until the October Revolution in Russia in 1917, after which he was used in a massive propaganda personality cult and was given an almost religious status. <br /><br />Regarding more personal criticisms, although the distinction between Marx's "personal" views and "official" Marxist views is often difficult, one criticism has been of racist views, such as regarding Russians and Slavs. Henry Hyndman, who spent many hours in Marx's company, in his Record of an Adventurous Life, attributed this anti-Russian obsession to Marx's Jewish ethnocentrism.2 These anti-Russian views may have contributed to the mass killings of Russians by Communists who often were from non-Russian ethnic minorities.<br /><br />Marx has also been criticized for racist views against many other groups, dislike of the working class, disdain for Western civilization, and general contempt for humanity.<br /><br />Marx, notably in his text On the Jewish Question, portrayed Jews as a clannish group engaged in economic exploitation of gentiles, but this would disappear in the future Communist utopian society, although some form of Jewish group identity would continue to exist also there. Some have suggested that Marx viewed his Jewishness as a liability (anti-Semitic views were not uncommon among early socialists, see the anti-Semitism article) and went to elaborate lengths to deny it in order to prevent criticism of his writings. A theme in other anti-Semitic writing (such as in Hitler’s writings) has been to claim that Marx had a specifically Jewish agenda in advocating a world society dominated by Jews in which gentile nationalism, gentile ethnic consciousness, and traditional gentile elites would be eliminated.<br /><br />Marx's wife hired a housekeeper when she received some money from an inheritance. Marx's final child was born to the housekeeper. Marx initially lied to his wife and claimed that his friend Engels was the father but eventually confessed.<br /><br />The highly educated Marx refused to take an ordinary job, instead preferring to live on handouts from his friend Engels, and in effect preferring that his family should often live in filth and poverty, contributing to four of his children dying before reaching adulthood. <br /><br />The class struggle had a just motive, and Socialism at the beginning was in the right. What has happened is that instead of pursuing its original path of seeking after social justice among men. Socialism has turned into a mere doctrine, and one of the chilliest frigidity, and it has no concern, great or small, for the liberation of working men. Karl Marx sat in his study and watched, with horrible impassivity, the most dramatic happenings of his age. With the British factories in Manchester before his eyes, and in the middle of formulating inexorable laws about the accumulation of capital, in the middle of formulating inexorable laws about production and about the interests of employers and workmen, was all the time writing letters to his friend Friedrich Engels, telling him the workers were a mob and a rabble, which need not be bothered with except in so far as they might serve to test out his doctrines. <br /><br />This world is now at the disposal of Marx on the one hand, and of Rothschild on the other. What can there be in common between socialism and a leading bank? The point is that authoritarian socialism, Marxist communism, demands a strong centralization of the state. And where there is centralization of the state, there must necessarily be a central bank, and where such a bank exists, the parasitic nation, speculating with the Labour of the people, will be found. <br />Nalliahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07214871963050537496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4332582469324010500.post-23511760666399502022014-05-01T16:33:53.912+01:002014-05-01T16:33:53.912+01:00I was puzzled by the strength of his attack on wor...I was puzzled by the strength of his attack on worker-controlled enterprises. While I agree it isn't a solution to all our problems, to me it seems like it would be an important part of creating a democratic culture. If you don't control things 8hrs a day 5 days a week then any other democratic component is slightly hollow. Democratic control of a workplace could also be important for developing the skills for democratic control in the wider public realm. I can see that worker-controlled enterprises in themselves wouldn't be enough, but multi-stakeholder co-ops for example already allow enterprises to involve other people in their democratic decision-making. Also I think there needs to be a democratic framework to regulate industries to prevent a race to the bottom - but this could be based partly within the workplace democracy. It should also involve other people in society of course, so that a wider public good can be considered. But workers control of their workplace doesn't preclude any of that and could be an important component of it.Jakenoreply@blogger.com