Jez you blokes

Andrew bolt isn't a threat to democracy. He's part of it. Why do you hate him so much?

"Andrew bolt isn't a threat to democracy. He's part of it. Why do you hate him so much?" The answer is obvious, they hate democracy; democracy is true equality and Marxists and the left can't stand equality because they, in their own 'minds', think they are so much better than other people.

One of the best rebuttals of Marxism has been written by Mark Latham of all people:

http://www.afr.com/p/opinion/consumers_rule_where_politicians_qP8onOO0SmoeXgXQg7ys3N

Consumption is the ultimate act of individuality, deciding what you are going to buy, frivolous or otherwise, which is why left hypocrites and anti-democrats like Hamilton despise consumption. Latham says:

"The industry’s demise is a tipping point in Australia’s political economy. It’s a victory for consumers over the ineffectiveness of subsidisation. It’s a sign that after 23 years of continuous economic growth and wealth creation, the consumption side of the economy has become more powerful than the production side. Cashed-up shoppers are exercising greater purchasing muscle than the feeble industry plans of union hand-maidens like Carr. Consumerism has finally beaten interventionism.

The political class does not want to hear this, but we have entered an era of marginalised government. Each day, the big news in the Australian economy is the strength of millions of consumer decisions, but this is essentially unreported in the electronic media. Where’s the headline or controversy in people shopping? If politicians focused on the importance of consumer decision-making, how could they blame each other for economic uncertainty and unemployment?"

Consumption is choice, the nemesis of Marxism and the other wretched left dystopias.

As a corollary I wonder whether any of these proto Marxists snipping away have ever been in business and not on the public teat.

ShadowMinister points to the diversity of Marxist and Marxist-derived perspectives. He suggests it is a bad thing. But in a sense that diversity is a strength - with people holding everything from 'moderate' to 'the most radical' politics finding inspiration in the Marxist tradition; and the emerging critical theory and post-Marxist traditions. As I've said before - my own politics owe a lot to Marxist tradition - but also to democratic revisionism and radical social liberalism. Bernstein argued socialism was liberalism's 'spiritual successor'. Interestingly if you go all the way back to J.S.Mill you will say that political and social liberals have always had an affinity with the democratic forms of socialism. Personally I don't accept the trendy 'absolute relativism' either; and I've long had issue with interpretations of Marx's 'anti-utopianism' as justifying the lack, at least, of 'provisional utopias' - that is actual 'blueprints' for the future (though always open to revision as circumstances dictate).

We've also established that atrocities have been committed as much for the sake of capitalism as for the sake of 'communism'. But Cohenite says the only difference between communism and fascism is that one promotes class struggle and the other national struggle. Yet capitalism in all its various forms that has brought us wars for over 100 years. (not only during the Cold War either) Go all the way back to the Opium Wars if you wish - with the purpose of 'forcing open Chinese markets'...

And CRUCIALLY Marxists and other socialists always saw the class struggle as dovetailing with the struggle for democracy. As I argue in the article Marxists were at the forefront of the fight for liberty and democracy in a Europe which was entering the twilight of the old Imperial Absolutism. And as I also argued - Marxists like Kautsky, Martov, Luxemburg - criticised the Bolsheviks because they broke this traditional nexus between socialism (equality), liberty and democracy. THERE'S a world of difference therefore between this kind of Marxism and Fascism; internationalism and peace versus nationalism and war; class struggle for democracy and freedom versus extreme authoritarian corporatism...

Tristan

If the internal dynamics of capitalism make a declining labour share inevitable, why did it not happen until the 1970s/80s?

Yes, the business cycle remains, but it shows no sign of tearing the economy apart, as Marx predicted.

See my earlier comments of the fallacies of “dependency theories” and the exploitation of developing countries.

As Cohenite has pointed out, the labour theory of value has long been debunked (except to the extent that it is trivially true – wages do not equal the value of production) it has no explanatory or causative value.

There is no evidence of deskilling, quite the reverse. Unskilled occupations account for a declining share of employment.

How do you square your claim that profits are falling with the falling share of labour? If Labour’s share is falling, Gross Operating Surplus must be rising. And p/e ratios have been pretty stable over 20 years

The important thing is not that some of Marx’s predictions are wrong – all forecasters get stuff wrong – but that he saw these trends as inevitable consequences of the structure and dynamic of capitalism. His model was wrong. In particular, the “law of increasing poverty” is wrong.

This underpinned the political attractiveness of Marxism – if capitalism must produce ever diminishing living standards, longer hours, worse working conditions etc, then an alternative looks attractive. But capitalism has delivered most of the benefits that Marx expected from Communism, and few of the horrors that real-life Communism has actually delivered.

Old zygote

“the rich get richer and the poor get poorer”

It’s what the headline says, but its not what the report actually shows, at least on my inspection. It certainly finds a high level of inequality, (the rich are getting richer faster than the poor are getting richer). But in absolute terms, wealth increased for the poor as well as the rich, and is expected to continue doing so (pp.25, 38, 42).

And it’s not by Andrew Leigh

Chris, slimy evasion way too transparent, I'm afraid.

Got that proof of the labour theory of value there, fellahs?

No? Thought not.

What we have just established is that:
1. all the leftists are wrong since every single one of their posts consists of nothing but fallacies endlessly repeated
2. they know this and have not the slightest interest in intellectual honesty
3. they persist in adhering to and propagating by lies what has been demonstrated both in theory and practice, and what they know to be a slave/parasite/genocidal creed,
4. given the chance, they would kill thousands of millions of people, just as their ideal policies - pubic ownership and control of the means of production - killed hundreds of millions in the last century
5. to the extent they resile from supporting full socialism, and recognise that individual and economic freedom are necessary to prevent socialism degenerating into tyranny and genocide, they contradict themselves in alleging the superiority of public ownership and control of the means of production
6. they claim they are not totalitarian but the reason they cannot and will not answer how they identify the limits of legitimate government power is because they don't believe in them and don't recognise any. They are totalitarian authoritarians to the marrow.
7. their support for socialist policies today has the effect of killing large numbers of people for example the 4 million a day dying from energy poverty caused by their idiotic attempts to fine-tune the winds that blow, and by destruction of capital everywhere in the world where socialist policies are followed
8. they support the propagation of their ideology in universities because they know that no-one would voluntarily pay for it
9. they don't understand Marxism
10. Bolt and all of the leftists' critics understand Marxism better than they do.

And what is their only reply to rational disproofs they can't answer? Evasion, circularity and ad hom!

Socialists are by far the biggest single vector of unfreedom, poverty, injustice, violence and exploitation in Australia and the world.

If the evidence is:

"Credit Suisse projects wealth for those in the bottom percentile will steadily fall over the next 60 years".

Then you would be a denialist to go off searching for some other concept.

The key point has already been made, if the poor go from one bowl of rice to two bowls of rice, while the rich go from 5 bowls of rice to 25, then the poor have got poorer.

Anyone who just prattles on about the fact that the poor improved their rice wealth, irrespective of the overall context, is deliberately looking at this change in isolation. Those who operate from a moral basis will look at the context.

Finally the same social forces that create a greater gap will drive the poor even harder, as Credit Suisse projects.

Some countries, with strong welfare states, may pass most of the burden onto real wage cuts for the middle classes - loss of penalty rates being the first cab of the rank.

Credit Suisse used household balance sheets - the structural trends are better observed in the ILO's factor-shares approach.