JohnEngelman
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- Jan 8, 2022
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When I first read The Communist Manifesto in a civics class in high school I was taught to view it condescendingly. Everywhere blue collar workers were buying homes in the suburbs. They were buying cars. They could support wives who did not need to work, and who could stay home with the children.
When I read The Communist Manifesto again it makes more sense now. Wages for blue collar workers have been flat since 1980. Meanwhile, the stock market sets new records.
In The Communist Manifesto, which was published in 1848, Marx asserted that the natural effects of capitalism are to accumulate wealth at the top, and to experience increasingly destructive economic downturns. Employees are also consumers. Because of modern industry and technology labor productivity increases faster than wages. Employees produce what they cannot afford to buy. This leads to crises of overproduction. This in turn leads to layoffs.
The economic policies of John Maynard Keynes, which were adopted to end the Great Depression, counteracted these tendencies. Progressive taxation, which was advocated in The Communist Manifesto, together with strong labor unions, minimum wage laws, unemployment compensation, and a well financed public sector of the economy, spread the wealth that had concentrated at the top. Employees became better consumers. Recessions became less frequent, and less severe.
Keynesian economic policies were discredited during the stagflation of the 1970’s. However, that stagflation was not caused by Keynesianism, but by the increases in the world price of petroleum that were caused by the OPEC Oil Embargo of 1973 and the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Keynesian economic policies were not designed to deal with a shortage of an essential natural resource. Also, a problem during the Great Depression was not inflation, but deflation.
Keynesianism had never been popular with a segment of the Republican Party, because it shifted wealth, prestige, and power from the business community to the government.
The administration of Ronald Reagan took advantage of the popular loss of confidence in the policies of John Maynard Keynes and began reversing these policies. The tax system became flatter. The real value of unemployment compensation and the minimum wage declined. Labor unions became weaker. Membership in labor unions declined. The first result of this was the recession of 1982. Unemployment reached 10.8 percent. Fewer jobs were created per year under Ronald Reagan than under Jimmy Carter.
Since the Reagan counter revolution, employees have suffered jobless “recoveries,” when the gross domestic product rose, but unemployment remained high.
A political thinker should be studied for insight, rather than doctrine. Most of Marx’s assertions are untrue. There is no inevitable progression from primitive communism to slavery, to feudalism, to capitalism. The restoration of slavery in North and South America should have demonstrated that to Marx. Feudalism is never inevitable. It is what happens when an urban civilization collapses. It happened in Greece after thirteenth century BC, when the Mycenaean civilization came to an end.
There is certainly nothing inevitable about the transition from capitalism to socialism to pure communism. If the government is to play a major role in the economy, the government must be competently led. If the government is not competently led, socialism will lead to declines in economic growth and technical innovation, and to a right wing backlash. Karl Marx's goal of pure communism requires too much from human nature to be achievable.
It is not true, as Marx asserted in The Communist Manifesto that “The working men have no country.” Blue collar workers are among the most nationalistic class in most countries. For most people most of the time loyalties of class are less powerful than loyalties of nation, ethnicity, and race. The writings of Marx do not explain the First World War I, the rise of Fascism and Nazism after the First World War, and the fact that from the end of the Civil War to the civil rights movement more blue collar workers in the American South supported the Klu Klux Klan than the labor movement. Those writings do not explain why in the United States the white working class has become a Republican constituency.
Marx’s labor theory of value ignores the role the law supply and demand has in determining prices. Bob Dylan claims to have composed his song “Blowin’ in the Wind” in twelve minutes. Even if it took him longer, that song created more value than a factory worker creates in a lifetime.
Marx’s theory of dialectical materialism is secular mythology.
Nevertheless, unregulated capitalism does concentrate wealth at the top. It does experience increasingly destructive economic downturns. Since the election of Ronald Reagan we have ignored those Marxian truths to our misfortune.
When I read The Communist Manifesto again it makes more sense now. Wages for blue collar workers have been flat since 1980. Meanwhile, the stock market sets new records.
In The Communist Manifesto, which was published in 1848, Marx asserted that the natural effects of capitalism are to accumulate wealth at the top, and to experience increasingly destructive economic downturns. Employees are also consumers. Because of modern industry and technology labor productivity increases faster than wages. Employees produce what they cannot afford to buy. This leads to crises of overproduction. This in turn leads to layoffs.
The economic policies of John Maynard Keynes, which were adopted to end the Great Depression, counteracted these tendencies. Progressive taxation, which was advocated in The Communist Manifesto, together with strong labor unions, minimum wage laws, unemployment compensation, and a well financed public sector of the economy, spread the wealth that had concentrated at the top. Employees became better consumers. Recessions became less frequent, and less severe.
Keynesian economic policies were discredited during the stagflation of the 1970’s. However, that stagflation was not caused by Keynesianism, but by the increases in the world price of petroleum that were caused by the OPEC Oil Embargo of 1973 and the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Keynesian economic policies were not designed to deal with a shortage of an essential natural resource. Also, a problem during the Great Depression was not inflation, but deflation.
Keynesianism had never been popular with a segment of the Republican Party, because it shifted wealth, prestige, and power from the business community to the government.
The administration of Ronald Reagan took advantage of the popular loss of confidence in the policies of John Maynard Keynes and began reversing these policies. The tax system became flatter. The real value of unemployment compensation and the minimum wage declined. Labor unions became weaker. Membership in labor unions declined. The first result of this was the recession of 1982. Unemployment reached 10.8 percent. Fewer jobs were created per year under Ronald Reagan than under Jimmy Carter.
Since the Reagan counter revolution, employees have suffered jobless “recoveries,” when the gross domestic product rose, but unemployment remained high.
A political thinker should be studied for insight, rather than doctrine. Most of Marx’s assertions are untrue. There is no inevitable progression from primitive communism to slavery, to feudalism, to capitalism. The restoration of slavery in North and South America should have demonstrated that to Marx. Feudalism is never inevitable. It is what happens when an urban civilization collapses. It happened in Greece after thirteenth century BC, when the Mycenaean civilization came to an end.
There is certainly nothing inevitable about the transition from capitalism to socialism to pure communism. If the government is to play a major role in the economy, the government must be competently led. If the government is not competently led, socialism will lead to declines in economic growth and technical innovation, and to a right wing backlash. Karl Marx's goal of pure communism requires too much from human nature to be achievable.
It is not true, as Marx asserted in The Communist Manifesto that “The working men have no country.” Blue collar workers are among the most nationalistic class in most countries. For most people most of the time loyalties of class are less powerful than loyalties of nation, ethnicity, and race. The writings of Marx do not explain the First World War I, the rise of Fascism and Nazism after the First World War, and the fact that from the end of the Civil War to the civil rights movement more blue collar workers in the American South supported the Klu Klux Klan than the labor movement. Those writings do not explain why in the United States the white working class has become a Republican constituency.
Marx’s labor theory of value ignores the role the law supply and demand has in determining prices. Bob Dylan claims to have composed his song “Blowin’ in the Wind” in twelve minutes. Even if it took him longer, that song created more value than a factory worker creates in a lifetime.
Marx’s theory of dialectical materialism is secular mythology.
Nevertheless, unregulated capitalism does concentrate wealth at the top. It does experience increasingly destructive economic downturns. Since the election of Ronald Reagan we have ignored those Marxian truths to our misfortune.
LMFAO
