QED

[Serial_Apologist]

a cogent explanation by a rich chap of how he or his ilk do not create wealth ..... his money comes from customers and if they have none he does not make any .... customers [ordinary people] create wealth QED
[but not TED apparently] ....

here it is in full

Yes but if one reads carefully he's only interested in "the middle class". Basically capital goes to where the maximum rate of exploitation can achieve the highest returns, or they lose their shareholders. If capitalists could they would only employ the working class to produce product for the rich; "unfortunately" they have also to take into account what Marx called "the reproduction of the labourer", ie the capacity for the worker to produce the goods by being well enough in mind and body so to do. But it's always a knife-edge situation - "he" (the capitalist) will be out-competed by his fellow competitor lowering "his" employees living standards, so long as he (the competitor) can in turn sell "his" product to the first capitalist who is pushing up his employees' incomes; but the first capitalist will go out of business if he chooses, ie, to invest in say Britain, where workers' living standards may be higher as a result of better political representation, workers having long fought for better working conditions etc. And this is the situation that will never be resolved as long as capitalism is not replaced, because at the end of the proverbial it is the iron law of capitalism that firms have to make profits to survive, or go under. Yes, I can hear people say, but what if governments in the richer countries subsidise the private sector to bribe firms not to move abroad? Well, this is then condemned as "protectionism" and inimical to so-called "free trade". See? - the ruling class co-operates beyond competition by means of monopoly and class interest - which is why true socialists were or should have always been against nationalism and advocated trade union transnational organisation to counter the power of multinational oligarchy - not just nice ideas about the brotherhood and sisterhood of man and woman but because it is an objective call determined by the global imbalance of class relations.

Sorry, but it really is heads you win, tails they lose, every time. There's no getting away from it, whatever one chummy maverick American millionaire says to the contrary. Robert Tressell spelt it out very articulately in "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists", and it's as true in 2012 as it was in 1908.

S-A

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

no you dont need to read it carefully to see he is interested in the middle class S_A but in America that refers to everyone ... or the working class as we say here .... fanny that innit ...

and even if he meants middle class as you define it SA i would still agree with his thesis but note its potential for extensionn ....

and disagree with your totalitarian mutualism .... try a Chinese factory? .... and recall that the USSR and satellites were economically stagnant in the extreme ...

to be candid i find both marxist or hard left and neo liberal or hard right theory dangerously wrong .... my reading of the evidence of economic history is that good old fashioned bourgeois democracy is the best we can get ... so long as it is not captured by the rentiers and bankers .... vive la france anglo-american capitalism sucks etc ... but then any gangster run system sucks ..... the essential point about bourgeois democracy is the rule of law and civilised dissent ... i do feel that the truly radical potential of bourgeois democracy is greatly under appreciated .... why the mere application of the law would have more than half our present financial elites behind bars!

[Serial_Apologist]

no you dont need to read it carefully to see he is interested in the middle class S_A but in America that refers to everyone ... or the working class as we say here .... fanny that innit ...

and even if he meants middle class as you define it SA i would still agree with his thesis but note its potential for extensionn ....

and disagree with your totalitarian mutualism .... try a Chinese factory? .... and recall that the USSR and satellites were economically stagnant in the extreme ...

to be candid i find both marxist or hard left and neo liberal or hard right theory dangerously wrong .... my reading of the evidence of economic history is that good old fashioned bourgeois democracy is the best we can get ... so long as it is not captured by the rentiers and bankers .... vive la france anglo-american capitalism sucks etc ... but then any gangster run system sucks ..... the essential point about bourgeois democracy is the rule of law and civilised dissent ... i do feel that the truly radical potential of bourgeois democracy is greatly under appreciated .... why the mere application of the law would have more than half our present financial elites behind bars!

While I don't get your point about the Chinese factory, it has to be said that the Soviet Union did actually expand with extraordinary rapidity under the dictatorial Stalinist distortion of "socialist planning" but we should by now be way beyond re-enactions, as most on what's left of the left would admit. The next few months could well decide which (if either) of us is right on this, Calum. The key missing ingredient in your picture is a power sufficient in strength and motivation to defend the existing system from those who are so easily turning it to what you so pungently describe. The "best" parts of the institutions are probably more prone to hostage taking than an economy's production sector: ideas - which at the end of the day is what institutions are - aren't of much use if locked up inside heads; machines can still be put to use, in whoever's hands. One thing I have learned/concluded from what I witnessed from 12 years' involvement is that how change takes place probably is the biggest determinant in protecting working class gains under bourgeois democracy. That talk of "smashing the state", more applicable in 1917 Russia, should have no place today, shouldn't need saying, not just because we're "nice chaps". But if change comes about by dint of necessity at the direst and most basic survival levels it will again be bloody with left or no left at the helm.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i have just noticed you have switched the argument S_A .... the chap is on about wealth creation that is fair and you are arguing for a particular view of social justice .... the argument about wealth creation can not be ducked imv .... more later

[Serial_Apologist]

i have just noticed you have switched the argument S_A .... the chap is on about wealth creation that is fair and you are arguing for a particular view of social justice .... the argument about wealth creation can not be ducked imv .... more later

Probably not fair to come back while you're busy, but wealth creation and social justice aren't disconnected imv. I agree that the argument about wealth creation cannot be ducked, but fairness is contested in the very nature of the beast. Like Schoenberg with sonata and variation forms, it will be a matter of picking up the tarnished elements of an outworn, imperfect system before being lost to landfill and make something anew out of them

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

s-a one ddifference between the way you and i think is that you suggest human affairs are designed or cam be and i think they emerge far more than theyy are created ...

[aeolium]

to be candid i find both marxist or hard left and neo liberal or hard right theory dangerously wrong .... my reading of the evidence of economic history is that good old fashioned bourgeois democracy is the best we can get ... so long as it is not captured by the rentiers and bankers .... vive la france anglo-american capitalism sucks etc ... but then any gangster run system sucks ..... the essential point about bourgeois democracy is the rule of law and civilised dissent ... i do feel that the truly radical potential of bourgeois democracy is greatly under appreciated .... why the mere application of the law would have more than half our present financial elites behind bars!

I agree generally with what you say at the start, Calum, but don't you think the financial crisis has brought to a head a powerful disenchantment with the ruling elites of the West, that unholy trinity of elected governments (and unelected oligarchies in some cases), media and big business which has enriched a tiny percentage of the population at the expense of the majority? The current crisis has engulfed the middle class (the economic crises of the 1970s and 1980s having hammered the working class) who are losing jobs and pensions, seeing living standards collapse and a hopeless future for their children. Yet the promises of the traditional governing parties are to carry on in much the same way, the promised land of recovery only reachable if the hard road of austerity is pursued (an austerity that does not touch those who have benefited so disproportionately from the last three decades of neo-liberal economic policies). It's not surprising that people are turning away from those traditional parties and indeed from traditional politics altogether towards movements like Occupy and Los Indignados - or towards extreme parties and nationalism. The breakdown of government that has been seen in Greece following their election will not be confined to that country. Politicians in Europe have seemingly been the last to notice these changes.

[Serial_Apologist]

s-a one ddifference between the way you and i think is that you suggest human affairs are designed or cam be and i think they emerge far more than theyy are created ...

It comes down to that loaded term "social engineering"!

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

simon jenkins is on our wavelength .... or quaint II whichever ....

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

gangsters

[amateur51]

gangsters

A remarkably cogent article I thought - many thanks!

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

the author made a remakably cogent Film of the same name Inside Job .... i do think we have seen and discussed that movie hereabouts ....


criminal prosecution and structural reform of finance and banks are the great test for our politicians ... presently they amply demonstrate just who's corner they are in [and it ain't ours]

[Serial_Apologist]

the author made a remakably cogent Film of the same name Inside Job .... i do think we have seen and discussed that movie hereabouts ....


criminal prosecution and structural reform of finance and banks are the great test for our politicians ... presently they amply demonstrate just who's corner they are in [and it ain't ours]

Brilliant - thanks for posting this article Calum.

Meanwhile, down in the mire of micropolitics, a discussion "started" on "Start The Week" (Radio 4) this morning on the subject of Market Triumphalism and the effects it has had and continues to have on the way we see and treat one-another. One would imagine from its tentativeness that people who have begun writing books on this sort of thing - and would, one might think, come ready tuned up to give articulate penetrating insights into, and pose a few solutions to get off the ground since this discussion has been underway in a media suppressed kinda way now for at least 40 years - might have had a tad more intellectual lead in their pencils. 45 minutes' worth of scrabbling around in dust at the foot of a megapolitical landslide, presided over by an overpaid presenter, was what it amounted to - as anyone will discover if they tune in again at 6.30.

Human affairs only emerge rather than being created because those who think they emerge let those who create them get away with it.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

ah but those that 'create' are in themselves and their actions aahem emergent ...

[Serial_Apologist]

ah but those that 'create' are in themselves and their actions aahem emergent ...

Meanwhile the elephant emergent ocupies the whole room.