Dearest Jardine - in need of sedation

What Marx foresees is within this early capitalism, something in it which tends toward monopoly and oligopoly. It is Marx who first coins the term creative destructiveness. He praises capitalism for its amazing achievements in energising and transforming society for the better.

Marx does not submit any revolutionary blueprint. He has nothing to say of politics or how a communist society is to come about. His is an economic theory. His predictions ask what follows capitalism?

The creative destructiveness of capitalism, he predicts, will turn on itself.

Thus it is not a simple question of where is Marx right. He is wrong on almost all scores.

However, our current stage of capitalist evolution does appear on many levels to have past its zenith. Our older industries are today dominated by larger public companies with oligopoly powers: banks, media, supermarkets, miners, auto manufacturers. Capitalism is already very different. Today's shareholder is entirely disconnected from the company he owns. The entrepreneurial spirit is replaced with professional management teams, who are as likely to lobby government, buyout its competition, or runaway to another country as they are to simply improve their product/service.

The recent GFC has left economists of all persuasions shaking there heads at understanding how to make economics work. The current derivative market is 10 times the size of global gdp. The consequences of a major correction are immeasurable. The financial crisis are occurring regularly andthe next is always much larger then the previous. In recent years countries like Spain and Greece are experiencing a depression. Last time the world had a depression we had the Second World War.

In these circumstances, the question where to for capitalism is natural to ask. And this is the question Marx first raised. And whilst Marx may have been wrong in every other way, that question, is now being asked in every country. By asking that question, Marx's historical relevance remains and the ignorant ramblings of a rabble rouser like Andrew Bolt - exactly who is Andrew Bolt - means not a jot.

sorry chris, but your university life experience reflects a lack of academic rigour, i have been critical of your so called academic work on the HIP scheme, in that you apportioned responsibility to the funder of the program without any theoretical foundation for such a conclusion. Taking your hypothesis to its logical conclusion Banks who provide finance have a vicarious liability for the negative externalities for recipients non-compliance with the law.

Your paper rehashed newspaper articles and this lack of academic rigour was exposed when verifiable empirical evidence was produced that contradicted your central premise, you simply dismissed this because it contradicted newspaper reports of views of industry participants with vested interests.

You failed to understand the constitutional responsibilities of the differing levels of govt, making hay of warnings from state regulatory bodies who chose to do nothing themselves, the industry apart from South Australia was totally deregulated. The bodies making so called warnings were the very bodies tasked with protecting worker and community safety who sat on their hands

Slasher1, could you précis that into one short understandable paragraph, please. The gobble-gook a bit hard to take for us ordinary folk.

I notice that the Pseudo-elite have snubbed us ordinary folk since we pointed out their worth in the real world.

YEBIGA,

beautifully put. I'm with you 100% I did my doctoral research on Marx and post-Marxists, and while I take issue with their dogmatic materialism, Marx's prognoses on capitalism continue to prove correct.

Yebiga: Marx's prognoses on capitalism continue to prove correct.

Or your particular slant on Marx's prognoses on capitalism continue to prove correct. Selective part's of it may & parts of it may not. It all depends on your own particular leanings, doesn't it?

Jayb,
It's much easier to argue there's no such thing as truth than it is to establish the bona fides of anything, simply because the medium of all thinking, language, is cultural construct, complete with all its aporetic inconsistency. We can thus argue that everything is born of bias, as you suggest.
However I differ and have little time for slides into relativism.
I can point to areas of Marxist theory that smack more of doctrine than the historical or empirical evidence which was Marx and Engel's goal. On the other hand I can also acknowledge the logic of libertarian thinking, however confined. I even think there's room for compromise between the two poles, just as I think there's room for compromise between materialism and idealism. The whole problem is that neither side is willing to compromise on their principles, which have as much validity as truth. The challenge for all of us is to think critically about out "own particular leanings".

The learned Cohenite serves as exemplar; I image he'll be modifying his stance on AGW now that our best scientific minds say it's "unequivocal". Or will he hold fast to the "truth?"