Because people keep asking… (political)

[rgraham666]

This is why I call neo-conservatives neo-Marxists.

MARXIST The only serious functioning Marxists left in the West are the senior management of large, usually transnational corporations. The only serious Marxist thinkers are neo-conservative.

Marxism is primarily an analysis of how society works - or rather, how it must work. This dialectic is based on the struggle of the classes and the battle of the unregulated marketplace in which the strongest win. It is a marketplace which cannot be tempered, according to Marx. It must and will run free and so function as a battleground between those who have power and those who don’t. The marketplace will seek to maximize profits even if this is to the disadvantage of most. Profits and power are the truth of the economic struggle and economic determinism will decide the social structure.

Most functioning Marxists stopped believing this sort of stuff by the end of the Second World War. They had come around to the ideology of stable bureaucratic management. In that they resembled the technocrats of Western government and corporate bureaucracies.

But these Western corporate managers and their academic acolytes were in fact thrown into a state of confusion by the collapse of 1929. It seemed as if the pure capitalist analysis, of which they were the official inheritors, had failed. An unrestricted marketplace had not led to ongoing growth and prosperity, but to total economic collapse. The ideology of a natural and general equilibrium produced by competition had been given its chance and had self destructed for all to see and suffer the consequences.

A good thirty five years passed before the corporate leadership were able to erase from their own memory and that of the public this failure. They then rediscovered with a virginal enthusiasm the virtues of the unregulated market.

This time they were supported by an intellectually sophisticated explanation for the dialectic provided by a group of economists at the Chicago School. They were able to dispense with the idea that public institutions could achieve social stability, protect the weak or encourage a wider distribution of wealth. Their new argument would have done Marx proud. It was not that they did not wish to help the weak or promote fairness. It was the natural rules of the marketplace - the dialectic - which made the class struggle inevitable.

The only disagreement between the neo-conservatives and Marx is over who wins the battle in the end. This is a small detail. Far more important is their agreement that society must function as a wide-open struggle.

Some people are surprised that Marxism should have reemerged on the Right. However, ideas, once launched, become public property. And they often appear in several guises before discovering their true form.

John Ralston Saul The Doubter's Companion

Carry on.

 

[Huckleman2000]

Wonderfully ironic, Rob.
Too often we forget the reasoning that led to major ideas, to our own detriment.

 

[rgraham666]

Wonderfully ironic, Rob.
Too often we forget the reasoning that led to major ideas, to our own detriment.

"A culture that ignores history has no past. And no future." Robert A. Heinlein.

I love the guy, Huck. Every time the political threads here or elsewhere threaten to make my brain explode, I read something by him and calm right down.

I should post his ruminations on economics.

 

[gauchecritic]

Thanks for that Rob. It explained quite a lot of what I had written about 2 hours ago but decided was pointless and would be discounted as socialist rubbish. Everybody knows communism doesn't work, why should we listen?

The main point of that which I wrote (but didn't post) got hidden amongst the therefores and ipso fatsoes, so I'll state it alone and see what anyone makes of it.

Economics is a measuring tool. Those that would use it as a tool of manipulation and expect any long term good to come from it are fools.

You can't use a ruler for a hammer.

 

[rgraham666]

Thanks for that Rob. It explained quite a lot of what I had written about 2 hours ago but decided was pointless and would be discounted as socialist rubbish. Everybody knows communism doesn't work, why should we listen?

The main point of that which I wrote (but didn't post) got hidden amongst the therefores and ipso fatsoes, so I'll state it alone and see what anyone makes of it.

Economics is a measuring tool. Those that would use it as a tool of manipulation and expect any long term good to come from it are fools.

You can't use a ruler for a hammer.

That last line touches on one of my favorite subjects. Making sure you use the right tool for the job.

It's a case of 'When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail'. If you only look at things through the spectrum of economics you can only see economic solutions to problems.

And some problems can't be solved economically.