Christoper
If real wages grow slower than productivity, the labour share of GDP must fall. That does not mean real wages fall. Most developed countries’ real wages have risen substantially since the 1970s (depending on the measure you use, the USA may be an exception). The labour share has fallen in Australia and other countries since the 1970s, but it rose in the two decades before that, and is now pretty much where it was in the early 1960s. There is no inherent tendency for it to rise or fall – it depends on technology, investment patterns, competition, structural change, etc. Nor is there any necessary causal link to real wages.

Yes, technology is a key driver of productivity growth. I would argue that market economies are much better and discovering and adopting new technologies than centrally planned ones.

The supposed “shift of exploitation from advanced nations to the Third World”, which is used to explain why Marx’s dystopian prophesies for workers in capitalist countries did not come true, also does not fit the facts. Economic growth in developing countries is currently much higher than in developed ones. Poverty rates are falling. The countries most successful at escaping poverty have been ones that embraced the western “exploitation” model (Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea).

I agree there have been many improvements in social and economic conditions since the industrial revolution. We live in a mixed economy, neither totally state-run nor totally laissez faire. It seems a pretty successful model to me.

Passy
so you disgree with Trotsky, who said "While we repudiate democracy in the name of the concentrated power of the proletariat" ?

"It is ironic that Bolt favours the very cleansing of Universities and establishment of monolithic thought centres that Stalin sought too"

If it wasn't so ironic and indicative of a complete lack of a capacity for self-criticism by the prevailing left in Universities that comment would be hysterical.

"Monolithic thought centres"; you mean like the "science is settled" abomination of AGW; or the complete lack of a critical thesis of the the boat people, the subjugation of aboriginals by left victimhood policies, the corruption within the trade unions as the ostensible dominant vehicle for vitiating capitalism's cruel exploitation of the workers, except for the recent book, Colebatch's analysis of union subversion and betrayal.

Talk about ivory towers!

Marxism is a thought bubble; the Western secular model which sustains capitalism as an expression of individuality works; Marxism would dismantle this and repeat the horrors of the USSR, China, Cambodia, every example of crony capitalism in South America etc etc.

What I read in the above comments by the lefties and commies is an expression of an intricate and erudite exercise in mental onanism.

In this context Marxism offers nothing which has not already been tried, tested and failed completely. The issue for the superior and successful Western model, which owes nothing to Marxism, is how to cater and whether in fact it should cater for ideologies which subvert the Western model which hosts them.

It is galling that the watermelons in parliament include active communists. The difficulty is how does a freedom orientated society mute the parasitic hostility from antithetical and failed ideologies like Marxism and Islam.

Christopher Warren

Do you understand that, if you are so confused that you use the term “capitalism” to refer to government ownership and control of the means of production, you’re only making a fool of yourself?

“You have so many internet search engines available that such questions can only indicate bad faith by those who introduce such canards.”

Four logical fallacies in one sentence, not bad:- and you take offence at being called stupid?

1. assuming what is in issue: Marx’s alleged economic contributions: circularity = irrational
2. appeal to absent authority: “go and prove my argument for me” = fallacy = irrational
3. “can only”: non sequitur: fallacy = irrational
4. “bad faith”: ad hominem, mind-reading, misrepresentation: fallacy = irrational.

Christopher, imagine if my argument took the form of two propositions:
1. “I am just right because I am right” and
2. “For proof go and research on google for me the many ways I am right”.

What would you think of that? Stupid?

“Marx demonstrated that unlike slavery, fuedalism, and merchantilism, capitalism had a structural tendency for crisis that threatened its very existence.”

No he didn’t. He asserted on the basis of alleged historical laws allegedly discovered by him giving rise to alleged inexorable forces, alleged classes which he never defined, involved in alleged exploitation based on the labour theory of value, economic propositions which you cannot defend without embracing the absurdities of the LTV, or contradicting yourself or Marx or both.

“These tendencies also created injustice in the meantime particularly in that the factor share going to labour would fall as the factor share going to capital would increase.”

That proposition depends on the labour theory of value. Without it, Marx’s theory completely collapses, which is why economic departments abandoned it in the 1870s. You haven’t caught up with developments of 140 years ago.

Go ahead. Try and prove the labour theory of value. If you can, I’ll unreservedly apologise for calling you stupid.

“Marx demonstrated that workers real wages would fall as confirmed by the ILO …”

(cont…)

Gawd, it's amazing the stink that comes out of Cohenite when you hold it up to the light.

More circularity. You haven’t demonstrated that the difference is *because of* or *despite*
a) capitalism, or for that matter
b) government.
(Statistics only prove correlation, they do not prove, and *are not capable of proving* causation.)

In other words you have no theory of causation, but only ever assuming what is yours to prove. And you don’t like being called … what?

Furthermore, Marx’s prediction that capitalism would lead to a large proletariat at the brink of starvation, and a small class of obscenely rich capitalists proved FLATLY INCORRECT. Capitalism has raised the living standards of everyone participating, including the poorest of the poor, to the HIGHEST LEVELS IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD, and that’s even *with* socialist morons taking 50 percent of production, and flushing it down the toilet on pink batts, and NBNs, fine-tuning the winds in 500 years time, and Craig Thompson.

Go ahead. Prove causation in what you have alleged. You’re only making my case for me.

“But the real problem is that capitalism attempts to stave-off crisis by increasing debt to astronomical amounts.”

Chris dear, when government uses its monopoly of force and monopoly of law-making, and by statute grants itself a monopoly of fiat money in breach of the Constitution, and then to further inflate the government’s revenues, cartelises banks by government-granted licenses based on government-dictated reserves of government-decreed money, backed up by government deposit guarantees at government-mandated rates, to fund a government-enforced market for endless government debt, by siphoning money off the masses of working people to grant handouts to government pet political favourites to fund government handout schemes like “social” housing, that’s not “capitalism” you fool, that’s what you’re arguing in favour of – government control of the means of production!

Furthermore, *derivatives* are by definition the wrong place to look for the *origin* of something. Derivatives function to hedge risk in their underlying contracts. The gargantuan derivatives bubble is a measure of the risk in the underlying MONEY AND CREDIT SOCIALISM that you are opposed to abolishing, remember? Or do you agree with the Austrian School now?