Dear Squeers,

I think I understand well enough to recognise crap for what it is.

David f.,

Keynes also had other things to say while speculating on the chances of capitalism delivering an equitable outcome.

During the Depression he wrote that in time we'd: "once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful....But beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice, and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still...."

It won't be long before his "hundred years" are up - and I see no sign that capitalism is moving away from avarice and usury as the cornerstones of its ascendancy.

Dear Poirot,

Keynes made a valid critique of capitalism. We can hope and work for something better than capitalism.

However, I don't believe we can look to anything better from Marxism. One does not have to parody Marx. The bigot condemns himself in his own words. "On the Jewish Question" concludes:

"The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism." That is proto-Nazi talk. "The Jews control society." is vile antisemitism.

He also prescribed a totalitarian society. In the Manifesto Marx advocated 10 points. Most of them would produce tyranny. 6 is especially pernicious.

6.Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.

There goes the right to publish what the state doesn't want you to publish. The followers of Marx produced a number of totalitarian tyrannies and murdered possibly 100,000,000 people.

However, my recognition of Marx for the bigot that he was and the sheer nastiness of what his followers produced according to his prescription is not in any way a defense of capitalism.

Marxism is worse, but there certainly can be something better.

Marxism is worse than capitalism. I want something better.

Poirot,
great quote!

davidf,
Try to understand that Marxism is an intellectual tradition, a critique of capitalism and not an alternative to it.
Marx recognised that capitalism could not be reformed but would have to be overthrown. I agree with him, though I think this could be done by peaceful means, a simple wealth cap for instance would be a start. Capitalism is a formula for endless growth in a closed system, period. Swedish capitalism is no more sustainable that the ethically disgusting US version. Democratic socialism was only ever a temporary reform facilitated by Keynes et al and paid for by consumerism, permanent war economies and credit.
Capitalism is today in desperate straights and production of commodities within a spectrum of western satiaty is pathologically driving globalisation--growth, conversion and development of new markets in the increasingly desperate attempt to distil a profit. Marx predicted it all.
Anyone who thinks capitalism can or will be reformed is deluded.

I listened to a good example of scientistic complicity the other day on the Science Show. Withal its doomsaying and talk of innovation, not a word about simply cutting consumption--the obvious way to husband resources and cut emissions. Because that would negatively affect economic growth, and CAPITALISM MUST GROW!
No, scientific innovation to address these issues will be paid for "via" consumption and via population growth (offshore) and infrastructure, and the rape of the planet and depletion of natural resources, until the capital (now dodgy credit) finally runs out and the whole thing collapses, leaving the chosen ones (probably the wealthy) to start again in a somewhat shabby and worse-for-wear and beyond redemption garden of eden.

davidf,

I didn't address your other calumnies above because I've done so before. Marx was not an anti-Semite and either from ignorance, your own bigotry or pure shamelessness, you quote and paraphrase him out of context.

Calumnies? I quoted the old bigot accorately. I cited the Marxist record accurately. He was a horrible antisemite. Not only in his essay, "On the Jewish Question" but there are many other documented instances. Sander L. Gilman in his book, "Jewish Self-Hatred" documents Marx's bigotry. I know you are besotten with his ideas, but that does not deny his bigotry.

He also favoured some nations over other nations according to what progress they had made in his scheme of history. He favoured the Russians over the Poles, and the Turks over the Greeks. His bigotry was not confined to Jews.

His followers have produced a number of tyrannies.

To say he was not an antisemite goes against the evidence that he was.