Yabby, yes I use ‘big business’ in a very broad sense. Perhaps I should be referring to the whole business community.

I don’t think it really matters whether it be super funds or shareholders or whatever that drive CEOs and companies to maximise profits. I can understand fully why they have that basic motive.

What really matters is the power and the will of governments to mitigate it. And this comes back to the will of the general community.

As you say, engendering that will, or changing human behaviour, basic priorities and thought processes, is a huge ask.

I agree that it is only likely to happen to the necessary extent after a lot of pain has been felt.

"What really matters is the power and the will of governments to mitigate it. And this comes back to the will of the general community."

Ludwig, yup the general community is the real problem. Govts
push for more, as it can be shown that if people have more
in their pockets, they will more often then not re elect a
Govt. It seems to me that some people are just never content
with their lot, whatever they have, its not enough. Thats
the real problem.

I'm at a point in life where I'm not rich, but I'm comfortable.
Sometimes I'll sell something, based on what I think its worth,
ie how much effort I had to put in to produce it, rather then
the market value. People are quite shocked lol, they think
its unusual, as they are so used to everyone pushing for every
penny that they can get.

The interesting thing has been that in return, when I purchase
something from them, they usually volunteer to be quite modest
in their charges.

My conclusion is that happiness is very much a state of mind.
Some people will never be content, whatever they have, they
will want even more. Others will stop and examine their lives
and realise that all things considered, they have it pretty
good compared to others in this world. Clearly for those
who always want more, money can't buy happiness, so in a sense
I feel sorry for them.

Shorbe,

I will first repeat my statement previously made to Yabby – Give-me-one-rational-reason-why-one-person-should-profit-from-other-people’s-labour. I put it to you that you can’t.

This is one of the issues at the core of your apparent “theory or practice” conundrum:

“Of-course,-the-reality-is-that-we-don't-have-free-market-capitalism-(and-probably-never-will),-we-have-something-quite-different,-but-that's-also-your-defence-of-socialism.-Theory-or-practice?”

On the surface your argument seems plausible - it appears as if both capitalist-theory and Marxist-theory never work “in-practice” and therefore can be lumped in the same basket of useless-theories.

However, there is a fundamental-contradiction in capitalist-theory which cannot be resolved-logically, or in-practice within capitalism. Capitalist-theory says that labour is the sole producer and measure of wealth. It then tries to explain why workers – the producers-of-wealth – should not keep the full-value of what is produced by their labour, but that employers or capitalists should privately-accumulate the share of what is produced by that labour which is surplus to the requirements of the labourers to survive. I can’t go fully into it here but an interesting-summary is Engels’ introduction to Marx’s Wage-labour and Capital http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/intro.htm. Yet for all of capitalist-theory’s attempts at giving “rational” explanations and justifications, there is no rational-reason why one person should profit from other people’s labour. The theory is based on an irrationality, and is itself inherently irrational. In trying to justify this irrationality, capitalist-theory (or Political-Economy) is forced to abstract notions which are not based on the material-reality, contradictions, and ultimately, patent lies.

Now, regardless of what you say about the reality, or non-reality, of “free markets” and capitalist-theory not including war, and individual capitalists’ preferences, and the “practice” of true capitalism etc, this aspect, i.e. the paying of workers less than the full-value of what they produce, and capitalists taking the rest, is “practiced” throughout capitalism – it is the material-reality. Wage-labour and the private-accumulation of the surplus-value of labour i.e. capital, underpin the entire system. In this sense capitalism “works in-practice” the way it is supposed to – capitalists enrich themselves by the labour of others – and this “profit motive” is the economic-foundation of society – the mode of production, and is the basis of all decisions and ideas (ideology) produced by capitalists.

As an example of the way this works, consider pharmaceutical-companies which exist solely to make profit – they invest in drug-research with a view to what is profitable, not to what is necessary for humanity – HIV in Africa for example. If the massive resources available to pharmaceutical-companies were focussed on a cheap fast cure for AIDS, chances are we might have found one by now. But face it, how much profit could be made from curing poor people? Profit first, human need second. We see this all the time – look at global warming – it is now widely acknowledged that CO2 emissions must be reduced immediately, but we won’t do anything that is detrimental to “the-economy” which really means “profits”, particularly of oil and coal-companies. It pervades every aspect of our lives.

Marx not only exposed the incompleteness and irrationality of “capitalist-theory”, he showed how the actual “practice” of capitalism itself (regardless of whatever theory was used to explain or justify it) would inexorably lead to monopolies, depressions, impoverishment of workers, competition for resources and markets, colonisations and war. Every “measure” taken by capitalists – protectionist policies, anti-monopoly policies, “free trade” policies, tariffs, subsidies, war, Keynesian-economics, etc, is an attempt by them to maintain these two fundamental and inextricable “practices” - wage-labour and capitalist-accumulation, and to get a bigger share of the pie themselves. There is an objective logic to capitalist “practice” which moves independently of “theories” and even the intentions of individuals. We look at people like Hitler, and even George-Bush, and think they are madmen, but in fact they are actually propelled by the logic of capitalism. They are the face of the faceless-capitalists called to serve capitalism in times of crisis, the more extreme the crisis, the more extreme its representatives.

Marx is credited with formulating what is variously called the “materialist conception of history”, dialectical materialism, or scientific socialism. Materialist philosophy basically says that our ideas are a product of the material world, as opposed to “idealist” philosophy which says that ideas came before the material world from someone like God who created it

Dialectical materialism says that in nature a “thing” is always in the process of becoming “something else” and consists of antagonistic and opposing forces, the resolution of which forces results in the “something else”. Nature is in a constant process of resolving contradictions.

Marxists study the historical development of human society, as a part of nature, which changes from one mode of economic production to the next as new technologies are developed to produce what sustains it. Humans are in a constant process of resolving contradictions, however unlike the rest of nature which is unthinking, they are able to consciously intervene into events.

Marx studied how changes in the mode of production resulting from new-technologies produced antagonisms between the feudal class and the new rising bourgeois class (capitalists), and how the resolution of those antagonisms resulted in a new ruling class – the bourgeoisie. But the new mode of production produced its own contradictions and antagonisms which will eventually require resolution, a major one being the antagonism between wage-labour and capital, which are in reality two sides of the one coin. Marx demonstrated how the interests of capital and wage-labour are diametrically opposed – the higher the profit on capital, the lower the share of productive wealth is paid in wages. Increasing profits for the capitalist class can only come at the expense of the living conditions of the working class. This is what produces the extreme polarisation of wealth we are currently seeing.

However the logic of capitalism and the inexorable process of this extreme polarisation, war and destruction in the interests of the capitalist class, is unsustainable and ultimately untenable for the working class which spontaneously (and to start with unconsciously) struggles against it for its own interests in an attempt to resolve the contradiction.

Marx’s study led him to the conclusion that for workers (and humanity as a whole) the only satisfactory resolution for them was to become the new ruling class, and he got an idea of what that would be like from the Paris Commune of 1871 when the starving Parisian workers took over Paris for 70 odd days before being massacred by the bourgeoisie– summary here: http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/intro.htm. They instituted their own government and their own decrees in their own interests. This is what socialists believe needs to happen internationally.

However, Marx saw that the international socialist revolution which is required will not come about spontaneously, and will be fought tooth and nail by the capitalists (as it was in Russia), and in order for it to occur and be successful the working class will be required to be conscious of the nature of capitalism and their membership of their “class”, and act consciously and strategically in a unified effort to take power and keep it in the face of counterrevolution. This is where Marxism – the use of dialectical materialism as an analytical tool, and guide to action - comes in.

So it is not that Marxist-theory doesn’t work “in-practice”, it is just that, to this point, the working class, despite a number of small wins, has been defeated by the capitalists. True socialism i.e. international socialism has not yet been “practiced”. The theory, unlike capitalist-theory, does not contain a fundamental irrationality or contradiction. Marxist-theory seeks to expose and resolve contradictions. However so far, the implementation of “Marxist-theory” by the working class and its leaders has faced enormous opposing forces which it has not yet been able to overcome - as predicted by the theory itself.

I am out of words, so will address your other points, and Ludwig’s, later.