Marx, Marxism, and The Communist Manifesto

[tango]

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https://babylonbee.com/news/caravan-of-liberal-americans-makes-way-toward-socialist-paradise-of-venezuela/

I knew I'd read something like that, just couldn't remember where. Thanks for the link, and the chuckle

 

[Ackbach]

I thought this article by atheist Peter Boghossian (HT: Nancy Pearcey) was absolutely fascinating. The critical theory folks don't just think the correspondence theory of truth is bogus (which it most certainly is not), but they think that your identity markers determine how much truth you actually know! Here's an absolutely startling quote from the article:

And—so the theory goes—the more “oppression variables” comprise one’s identity, the clearer one’s understanding of reality becomes.

That is earth-shatteringly important for understanding critical theory. All kinds of bizarreness from critical theory makes a bit more sense when this is understood.

It is also well worth thinking about the different rules of engagement, and why critical theorists think shutting down a speaker by rude methods such as doing something loudly is totally acceptable (it's not).

 

[Jason76]

However, though, just as socialists are often cheapskates - it's cheapskate capitalists which - ironically, broaden the appeal of socialism.

 

[tango]

However, though, just as socialists are often cheapskates - it's cheapskate capitalists which - ironically, broaden the appeal of socialism.

Sadly there's a lot of truth here.... the ones who want their position to be more like a feudal overlord than a corporate boss do little to advance the cause.

 

[Jason76]

Sadly there's a lot of truth here.... the ones who want their position to be more like a feudal overlord than a corporate boss do little to advance the cause.

Right on the money there! Going somewhat against capitalism - and for the common people is what Trump has done. It's made the party for the common people - which wasn't the case in the past.

 

[tango]

Right on the money there! Going somewhat against capitalism - and for the common people is what Trump has done. It's made the party for the common people - which wasn't the case in the past.

The thing is that capitalism as it's supposed to work, works well. It rewards the people who do a good job and make a product that people want, and slowly weeds out the ones who aren't making anything useful.

What we have now is badly distorted, especially in the parts of the market where companies can make huge losses indefinitely for no reason other than they found someone willing to pump money into them until the dream turned real. In any normal world a company can't run 10-figure losses every year and still stay in business, driving out competition.

 

[Jason76]

The thing is that capitalism as it's supposed to work, works well. It rewards the people who do a good job and make a product that people want, and slowly weeds out the ones who aren't making anything useful.

What we have now is badly distorted, especially in the parts of the market where companies can make huge losses indefinitely for no reason other than they found someone willing to pump money into them until the dream turned real. In any normal world a company can't run 10-figure losses every year and still stay in business, driving out competition.

Well, in my recent experience with business (I got a $5,000 loan for a web development project.) - I can only play with what my credit and income will allow; the bank isn't very merciful - like those who bailed out Ford in 2008 etc..

 

[tango]

Well, in my recent experience with business (I got a $5,000 loan for a web development project.) - I can only play with what my credit and income will allow; the bank isn't very merciful - like those who bailed out Ford in 2008 etc..

... and that's precisely the problem - what should be a more or less free market (admittedly with some advantages for people who have more access to more money, such as those with rich relatives, lots of savings etc) ends up so badly distorted by the willingness of some investors to pump unimaginable amounts of money into business so they can lose money at terrifying rates, with little more than a hope that it will turn around and start making money before the losses become too big to ignore.

Along the way entire industries are disrupted in ways that destroy the benefits that proper capitalism should bring - for example when technology companies exist to develop something not to offer it to the market and hope to make some money by meeting consumer needs or wants but in the hope that sooner or later they'll be able to sell out to Google or Microsoft or Facebook or similar all that happens is that resources are tied up producing nothing of any value, and all the while the smaller operators are squeezed out of existence. It's hard to compete when your competitors have a willingness to take unlimited losses because they have unimaginably deep pockets, or when you're trying to hire good employees but the best ones have been snapped up by a company that offers little more than a long-term hope of instant riches triggered by a successful IPO.

Under a truly free market a company that can't make a profit goes out of business sooner or later. I think I would agree with the concept that a company deemed "too big to fail" is too big to exist.

 

[Ackbach]

However, though, just as socialists are often cheapskates - it's cheapskate capitalists which - ironically, broaden the appeal of socialism.

No doubt they do, though, of course, either argument (socialists are often cheapskates, therefore socialism is wrong, or capitalists are often cheapskates, therefore capitalism is wrong) is committing the genetic fallacy and should be given no attention whatever.

Christianity is no different. Non-Christians often argue that because Christians are so messed up (we certainly are!), that therefore Christianity cannot be true. As C. S. Lewis pointed out, not only is this committing the genetic fallacy, but it also misunderstands the very nature of Christianity. If Christianity is all about people who can't save themselves, and it is, then who should you expect to find in the Christian ranks? People who are messed up, and know they're messed up!

 

[Ackbach]

... and that's precisely the problem - what should be a more or less free market (admittedly with some advantages for people who have more access to more money, such as those with rich relatives, lots of savings etc) ends up so badly distorted by the willingness of some investors to pump unimaginable amounts of money into business so they can lose money at terrifying rates, with little more than a hope that it will turn around and start making money before the losses become too big to ignore.

I'm not sure I can agree with you, here. Investors should be free (as in, free market) to invest in whatever lawful enterprise they wish. I believe a genuinely free market will be robust enough to heal itself from any such momentary aberrations.

Along the way entire industries are disrupted in ways that destroy the benefits that proper capitalism should bring - for example when technology companies exist to develop something not to offer it to the market and hope to make some money by meeting consumer needs or wants but in the hope that sooner or later they'll be able to sell out to Google or Microsoft or Facebook or similar all that happens is that resources are tied up producing nothing of any value, and all the while the smaller operators are squeezed out of existence. It's hard to compete when your competitors have a willingness to take unlimited losses because they have unimaginably deep pockets, or when you're trying to hire good employees but the best ones have been snapped up by a company that offers little more than a long-term hope of instant riches triggered by a successful IPO.

It might be hard to compete, but that's entrepreneur-ship in general. For every story like what you've outlined here, you can also bring up a story of some small company that produces something wildly successful, far better than the big company like Google or Microsoft, and then sells out at an outrageous profit. E.g., though I'm not sure I'm in favor of genuine monopolies, Rockefeller Oil got taken advantage of countless times by small-timers starting up an oil business and then selling to Rockefeller for huge profits.

Under a truly free market a company that can't make a profit goes out of business sooner or later. I think I would agree with the concept that a company deemed "too big to fail" is too big to exist.

It's quite interesting to compare the Fortune 100 companies of 1980 or even 1990 with the Fortune 100 companies of today. How much overlap is there? I would argue that the phrase "too big to fail" doesn't mean much. Any company can fail. Google and Facebook, with their ultra-progressive biases, are going to have problems someday, as the ultra-progressive worldview is not grounded in reality.

 

[tango]

I'm not sure I can agree with you, here. Investors should be free (as in, free market) to invest in whatever lawful enterprise they wish. I believe a genuinely free market will be robust enough to heal itself from any such momentary aberrations.

Ordinarily I would agree with you - in principle I favor the concept of the free market - but a market can hardly be called free if one participant has to do wild and crazy stuff (you know, like eat, pay rent etc) while the competition can merrily run up unimaginably large losses and need do nothing more than wait until the competition throws in the towel. Essentially it's the reason why predatory pricing is illegal.

It might be hard to compete, but that's entrepreneur-ship in general. For every story like what you've outlined here, you can also bring up a story of some small company that produces something wildly successful, far better than the big company like Google or Microsoft, and then sells out at an outrageous profit. E.g., though I'm not sure I'm in favor of genuine monopolies, Rockefeller Oil got taken advantage of countless times by small-timers starting up an oil business and then selling to Rockefeller for huge profits.

Finding it hard to compete because there are some really good people out there in the competition is one thing - if you can't "build a better mousetrap" maybe you should try to build something else. Finding it hard to compete because there are people out there who don't have a very good product but sell it at a huge loss because they don't care if they lose huge amounts of cash is a different proposition altogether.

It's quite interesting to compare the Fortune 100 companies of 1980 or even 1990 with the Fortune 100 companies of today. How much overlap is there? I would argue that the phrase "too big to fail" doesn't mean much. Any company can fail. Google and Facebook, with their ultra-progressive biases, are going to have problems someday, as the ultra-progressive worldview is not grounded in reality.

I mean the concept of "too big to fail" in the context of a company that essentially gets a one-way bet on the market thanks to an implied guarantee of government support if they do get it catastrophically wrong. If a company finds itself in a situation where it can take a huge risk, reaping huge rewards if it gets its bets right and receiving a government bailout to protect it from the crushing losses if it bets wrong, that is a situation that shouldn't be allowed to exist.

In the context of banking (an obvious example of an industry that got lots of money to prop it up) I think it makes sense to separate consumer banking from investment banking. If you want to take deposits from the average "man in the street" you set up a consumer bank and you don't get to play in the high stakes global markets. If you want to play in the high stakes global markets you don't get to bet with consumer deposits and if you get it wrong you lose your shirt. If a load of bad bets leaves the Wall Street bankers unemployed (and potentially unemployable), too bad for them - it's the risk they chose. But we shouldn't be in a place where speculation is such a large part of the market that a bunch of bad bets risks wiping out the average working person who gets little to no benefit from the speculation.

 

[Ackbach]

I'm checking out Karl Marx and the Close of his System, by Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk, one of the great Austrian economists. I love titles like that, particularly when they are applied to someone like Marx. It essentially says, in academic tough-speak, "Marx has nothing to offer, and he's wrong about everything." It reminds of that lovely passage in 1 Kings 20:11:

And the king of Israel answered, “Tell him, ‘Let not him who straps on his armor boast himself as he who takes it off.’”

 

[Albion]

Ordinarily I would agree with you - in principle I favor the concept of the free market - but a market can hardly be called free if one participant has to do wild and crazy stuff (you know, like eat, pay rent etc) while the competition can merrily run up unimaginably large losses and need do nothing more than wait until the competition throws in the towel. Essentially it's the reason why predatory pricing is illegal.

You seem to be confusing "free" (market) with your personal concept of "fair."

So long as the market is free, we will of course have some people prospering more than others. Not everyone is endowed with equal abilities (or even luck), of course, and that is not the "fault" of the market.

 

[tango]

You seem to be confusing "free" (market) with your personal concept of "fair."

So long as the market is free, we will of course have some people prospering more than others. Not everyone is endowed with equal abilities (or even luck), of course, and that is not the "fault" of the market.

It's nothing to do with some prospering more than others - the only way to prevent that would be to make everyone equally miserable. Some say that's the ultimate outcome of socialism, and in many ways I'm inclined to agree.

The trouble isn't that some have more than others. The trouble is when a particular player ends up with so much power that they can essentially stifle competition, or drive it out, or price it out of existence. Back in the days when the browser war was between Netscape and Internet Explorer, it was often said that it's impossible to compete with free. At the time Microsoft was the technology behemoth and, had they been inclined, could have shut down just about any new product by bundling a comparable product with Windows.

More recently WeWork has been the topic of much media ink - quite aside from the disastrous failed IPO there has been talk of how they were undercutting other landlords to poach their tenants, all made possible thanks to Masayoshi Son and his willingness to dump billions of dollars into a hole in the hope that one day it would become profitable. Somewhere we need to strike a balance between the idea that people can do what they want with their own money, and the idea that simply dumping unimaginable amounts of money into a market to distort it enough to drive out other players so you can have a monopoly (or something very close to a monopoly) doesn't seem like a good way to operate.

 

[Albion]

It's nothing to do with some prospering more than others - the only way to prevent that would be to make everyone equally miserable. Some say that's the ultimate outcome of socialism, and in many ways I'm inclined to agree.

I'm sorry to hear that, considering that no Socialist government in history ever treated all its citizens equally, financially speaking. They ordinarily do not even claim that as an objective.

The trouble isn't that some have more than others. The trouble is when a particular player ends up with so much power that they can essentially stifle competition, or drive it out, or price it out of existence.

But there you are not assessing the free market. That's not a free market, yet you criticize the free market when you make this observation that you have. (?)

Somewhere we need to strike a balance between the idea that people can do what they want with their own money, and the idea that simply dumping unimaginable amounts of money into a market to distort it enough to drive out other players so you can have a monopoly (or something very close to a monopoly) doesn't seem like a good way to operate.

Ahem!

 

[tango]

But there you are not assessing the free market. That's not a free market, yet you criticize the free market when you make this observation that you have. (?)

I see the idea of a free market as meaning that if you build a mousetrap that is better than my mousetrap you thrive while I have to improve or die. If my mousetrap is vastly superior to your mousetrap but you drive me out of the market by giving yours away for free (on the basis it at least kinda sorta works), because you've got billions of dollars and don't care if you lose money for years as long as it drives me out of business, how is that anything other than a distortion in the market? The market is getting little more than a theoretical choice - it has much the same effect as the government giving you a huge tax break to set up shop while taxing me on my profits, except more destructive.

Ahem!

Not sure what you're trying to say there.

 

[Jason76]

You all might laugh - but I read - and liked - some Communist stuff in middle school. Well, it was a biography of Marx. I was sort of shocked - cause for the first time - I turned against what I was raised to believe in (I was a kid during the 80s (went to middle school during the early 90s) and had a right-wing military father.). I mean, I was reading this and it sounded like A-OK stuff, a paradise. However, though, as I got older, I began to doubt it more and more - now to the point where I don't believe it works.

 

[Ackbach]

I thought this article was amazingly good, particularly this quote:

If Jesus had been a Critical theorist, He would have certainly liberated the Jews from their economic oppression…But He did not.

 

[tango]

I'll read the article later, but for now have to agree with the kinda-sorta-implied idea that Jesus doesn't neatly fit into our defined political boxes.

I don't suppose we should be surprised to see how many people insist that Jesus would vote exactly the same way they do. I remember seeing one person claiming Jesus was a socialist. Not sure where they got that idea from, but I'll invite guesses as to which way they vote.

ETA: Just to be clear, I don't think Jesus is a Republican either.

 

[Lamb]

I always was under the impression that Jesus would NOT vote maybe saying that this wasn't His Kingdom.