Capitalism is in crisis across the globe – but what on earth is the alternative? Well, what about the musings of a certain 19th-century German philosopher? Yes, Karl Marx is going mainstream – and goodness knows where it will end.Read it at Raw Story
Marxism goes mainstream
by Stuart Jeffries, The Guardian
You knew this was bound to happen, didn't you?
and now for something completely different:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.americandebtcrisis.com/?ppref=GGL420BN0712A&_kk=economic%20crisis&_kt=45b10a47-6aee-4cb8-99c2-00d8be928bee&gclid=CPGpw4_1grECFUff4AodOQ05HA
Plenty of debt-phobes and gold lovers...
I dont get Mises' Lew Rockwell's connection to this "anti-debt" conference?
1. Marxism is back. How cool is that? Maybe they can sell a whole bunch of these neat postcards:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.flickr.com/photos/bob_roddis/5724123533/sizes/o/in/set-72157600951970959/
2. The problem with debt is that you have to pay it back unless you immorally breach your agreement by repaying in diluted fiat funny-money which itself is a major problem.
"…immorally…"
ReplyDeleteRe-paying debt is a contractual obligation, not a moral one.
Seems like Herman Daly has more relevant things to say about capitalism's current crisis than Karl Marx does. Namely that natural capital, not human/built capital, is now the limiting factor of production and all the systems we've constructed to optimize and maximize the latter exacerbate issues with the former.
ReplyDeleteSo Bob is Rockwell's view that it is only govt ie public debt that is bad???
ReplyDeleteBut bank debt is aok? Or if you owe somebody gold then that is Ok too????
How does Rockwell fit in?
From the article: "Overworked, underpaid workers ostensibly liberated by the largest socialist revolution in history (China’s) are driven to the brink of suicide to keep those in the west playing with their iPads. Chinese money bankrolls an otherwise bankrupt America."
ReplyDeleteHa! like anyone here in the US pays Yuan for an iPad....
More like: "Obtaining ever-increasing USD balances satisfies the irrational desires of the corrupt Chinese leadership who in effect, are enslaving their own population in a zombie-like quest for the premier western financial assets..."
The Apostle might have called what the Chinese leadership are suffering from "phildollaron", ie "dollarophilia", ie "fondness for dollars"... even from a secular POV it's irrational behavior at best.
rsp
ahahaha good old Bob
ReplyDelete"Marx?! B-b-but..."
*posts bumper sticker*
And now for something completely different:
ReplyDeleteOver the past 40 years, Bernard Schmitt, Emeritus Professor of Monetary Economics of the Universities of Fribourg (Switzerland) and of Bourgogne (France), has developed an analysis of the current system of national and international payments. Together with Alvaro Cencini, Full Professor of Monetary Economics at the University of Lugano (Switzerland), he has been proposing a new and well-structured explanation of the causes of both national and international monetary disorders and the crises they lead to.
The analysis of bank money, which the two authors developed in collaboration with professors and students from different countries is entirely based on the principle of double-entry bookkeeping, and represents the cornerstone for a pioneering investigation of the structural and logical laws on which every economic system rests, at least since the creation of banks. By demonstrating that money is but an instantaneous flow allowing for payments to be carried out by banks, the advocates of this novel analysis have been able to establish that economic disorders such as inflation and pathological unemployment are not caused by economic agents’ behaviour.
read the rest at:
http://www.quantum-macroeconomics.info/
Cencini wrote an open letter to Mario Monti. From the same website:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.quantum-macroeconomics.info/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Open-letter-to-Prof.-Monti.pdf
Thought I'd post this here as I didn't know where else to post...
"The problem with debt is that you have to pay it back unless you immorally breach your agreement by repaying in diluted fiat funny-money which itself is a major problem."
ReplyDeleteWhy do people lend then?
Lenders know that there will be inflation in the future, yet they still choose to lend. It's their choice.
With deflation, a borrower has to pay back the loan with money worth more than it was at the time the loan was originally made, plus the agreed interest.
ReplyDeleteFor debtors, inflation is better than deflation.
For creditors, deflation is better than inflation.
Bob, check it out:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.politifake.org/image/political/1101/socialist-women-sweden-political-poster-1294331706.jpg
Y,
ReplyDelete"Lenders know that there will be inflation in the future, yet they still choose to lend."
Because all they are really after is the fat "commission" on the loan origination and perhaps some loan "servicing" fees.
They take no credit/inflation risk because they quickly lay off those risks on preferably the govt or if they are forced to then institutional investors... they are corrupt cowards in business.
rsp
Well ok Matt, but decent lenders also lend knowing that there will be inflation in future.
ReplyDeleteDidn't read the article but I am fairly certain the Chinese politburo will be getting changed out this year and it happens once every 10 years,(I think, any way a long time for the next bunch of centralists to take power.) I guarantee that the outgoing crop will stimulate and lower RESERV RATIOS, etc. etc. to make sure the new bunch of Stalins are sitting pretty. Call government any name you want I simply call it the haves and the have nots. But without the army on the side of the haves, there will be revolution comrades!!
ReplyDeleteWhy do banks lend money at ridiculos low rates? Simple when your a member bank you get to lend money you didnt create and have now risk and you dont have to charge a very high interest to make a profit, oh by the way did I say what the effects of low interest rates are, to drive out the non member banks and shadow banking and corporate competition. Also low interest rates are destroying social security bonds, and pension funds, and savers accounts, but of course Uncle Ben and Timmah know this.
ReplyDeleteBob,
ReplyDeleteYou might have had me but you lost me at this point right at the end: " but of course Uncle Ben and Timmah know this."
I take the other side here, they are morons imo, ie they know not what they do...
resp,
MMT would love to see the world become more and more socialist. That's the basis of the entire agenda.
ReplyDeleteNaw, MMT doesn't want the entire world to become more socialized.
ReplyDeleteJust you, FDO.
FDO15 is a dunce. That's the basis of his entire agenda.
ReplyDeleterandy mentioned "labor theory of value" in mmp blog 50, kind of neat, since most people work for a living
ReplyDeleteFDO15, you might enjoy this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.politifake.org/image/political/1101/socialist-women-sweden-political-poster-1294331706.jpg
"The problem with debt...."
ReplyDeleteDebt in what?
FDO15 said...
ReplyDeleteMMT would love to see the world become more and more socialist. That's the basis of the entire agenda.
FDO15, if you don't realize it, this is trolling and it is unwelcome in the blogosphere. You not only make a fool of yourself by doing it but you persist in making a fool out yourself, which is really the sign of fool.
Did you read the link? It is quite interesting, actually. It's about generational differences, generational change, and a potentially significant global trend.
"2. The problem with debt is that you have to pay it back unless you immorally breach your agreement by repaying in diluted fiat funny-money which itself is a major problem."
ReplyDeleteThat's such an hilarious critique on an MMT blog.
Maybe the problem is with interest. A problem finding the fiat money to pay the compounded interest :-J
I love the toungue in cheek humour Bob and FD015 bring to the table.
If Mr. Wray wants to hang his hat on the labor theory of value, I'm cool with that too. Put that up on the side of buildings and billboards.
ReplyDeleteMMT SUPPORTS THE LABOR THEORY OF VALUE!!!
Bob Roddis,
ReplyDeleteThe public 'debt' is a promise to exchange dollars and bonds for... dollars and bonds. If you think it would be "immoral" to breach this promise, rest assured: keeping this promise is the simplest thing on earth and we can do it forever. 'Funny money' is thus a lot more moral than the 'humorless money'.
Yet another cracker from the master of mirth himself.
ReplyDelete"MMT would love to see the world become more and more socialist. That's the basis of the entire agenda."
As opposed to FD015 whom I can only assume wishes to see a land of trailer parks interspersed with a few mansions. I am sure as he has such a big mans jobs he is confident of landing himself a deluxe trailer.
"The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. What every thing is really worth to the man who has acquired it, and who wants to dispose of it or exchange it for something else, is the toil and trouble which it can save to himself, and which it can impose upon other people." (Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book 1, chapter V)
ReplyDelete"The value of any commodity, ... to the person who possesses it, and who means not to use or consume it himself, but to exchange it for other commodities, is equal to the quantity of labour which it enables him to purchase or command. Labour, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities. (Wealth of Nations Book 1, chapter V)
"The real value of all the different component parts of price, it must be observed, is measured by the quantity of labour which they can, each of them, purchase or command. Labour measures the value not only of that part of price which resolves itself into labour, but of that which resolves itself into rent, and of that which resolves itself into profit." (Wealth of Nations, Book 1, chapter VI).
In Value, Price and Profit (1865), Karl Marx quotes Smith on LTV and sums it up: "It suffices to say that if supply and demand equilibrate each other, the market prices of commodities will correspond with their natural prices, that is to say, with their values as determined by the respective quantities of labor required for their production."
"The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. With the increasing value of the world of things proceeds in direct proportion to the devaluation of the world of men. Labor produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity -- and does so in the proportion in which it produces commodities generally." (Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, 1844)
All quotes from Wikipedia - Labor Theory of Value, which is a useful summary of the history of LTV that goes back to Aristotle and Aquinas.
Roddis supports the theory of "MONEY THAT NEVER EXISTED!"
ReplyDeleteI'll give Marx one thing, he came up with a catchy phrase for bankers:
ReplyDelete"The first issue in such a system is how does one become a bank?—or a “cavalier of credit” in Marx’s wonderfully evocative phrase?"
http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2009/01/31/therovingcavaliersofcredit/
Marx mistakenly thought that the working class would kill capitalism. It's now pretty clear that the capitalist class will kill -- or at least severely maim --capitalism. As wealth and income becomes increasingly concentrated in a vanishingly small capitalist class, everyone else has relatively less to spend on the stuff that capitalists must sell to generate the profit that sustains them. The result is under-consumption, which makes getting an acceptable rate of return (or perhaps any return) on productive investment -- investment in the making and selling of stuff.
ReplyDeleteSince labor can't afford to buy enough of the stuff the capitalists make to keep industrial profits high enough, capitalists then discover that the highest rate of return comes from financing the consumption that labor can't afford to pay for out of pocket. And thus we get the myriad rent-extraction ponzi schemes -- subprime mortgages, 22% interest rates on credit card balances, bank fees, high interest loans to students at for-profit colleges -- whose slow-motion collapse we've been witnessing since the demise of Lehman Brother's. And this is how capitalism self-destructs without the "working class" lifting a finger.
The other thing Marx clearly didn't anticipate was the role that mass media, advertising, and capitalist- manufactured "popular culture" would have in destroying working class solidarity and class consciousness. But that's a story for another day.
jeg3, check out Steve Keen’s DebtWatch No 31 February 2009: “The Roving Cavaliers of Credit.”
ReplyDeleteComplete with picture of Marx.
Thus causation in money creation runs in the opposite direction to that of the money multiplier model: the credit money dog wags the fiat money tail. Both the actual level of money in the system, and the component of it that is created by the government, are controlled by the commercial system itself, and not by the Federal Reserve.
Seen on FB at Occupy Israel today:
ReplyDelete"Soon the poor will have nothing to eat but the rich."
"Since labor can't afford to buy enough of the stuff the capitalists make to keep industrial profits high enough, capitalists then discover that the highest rate of return comes from financing the consumption that labor can't afford to pay for out of pocket."
ReplyDeleteAnd we thought the "Company Town" was no more.
"Marx mistakenly thought that the working class would kill capitalism"
ReplyDeleteI guess he hoped the leadership elite would be less corrupt and the masses would be happy with equality. I wonder what he would have proposed if he had access to modern phychological and anthropological studies. If he understood how human behaviors and motivations are linked to our ancient hierarchical clan structures. Could he have come up with a more durable proposal?
If Mr. Wray wants to hang his hat on the labor theory of value, I'm cool with that too. Put that up on the side of buildings and billboards.
ReplyDeleteI get that you see this as a potential weakness but it really would be a step in the right analytical direction. If you took the time to properly understand the LTV, I think you'd agree.
"this is how capitalism self-destructs without the "working class" lifting a finger."
ReplyDeleteActually this is how capitalism strengthens itself.
Who has gained the most, in the end, out of the financial crisis and "sovereign debt crisis"?
Wray: "I do not want to get into a debate about labor value theory. My point is much simpler and highly intuitive: if I must work an hour to get something valued at one unit of the money of account it will be more valuable than if I received two money units per hour of work."
ReplyDeleteMMP 50
bob roddis, i think this might apply to you http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/new-rule-if-14-year-old-can-deliver-your-m
ReplyDeleteLTV:
ReplyDeleteI see the whole reason to have the LTV in the first place is to monitor relative "levels" of work (and perhaps then we reason the "fairness"?) that we all do for each other, more or less... why else care about LTV at all? Unless we want to use it to then look at what each other are doing for each other in some sort of quantitative way...
I believe Jesus perhaps taught that for the human to really "get there" so to speak, we would get to a position even 'beyond' the inherent "fairness meter" of the LTV doctrine.
So we perhaps ultimately wouldnt even want to keep track of such things, or at least it would no longer be very important to us if at all... not that this looks like it will happen any time soon ;)
Prior post may apply as labor and value judgements are involved:
http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com/2011/12/whatsoever-may-be-just-i-shall-be.html
rsp,
FDO supports lemon socialism, for banks and poor bankers (like himself). That's his whole agenda.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately this is becoming the true story, corporatism and fascism are winning and are the preferred system of the elites.
In traditional Chinese thought and dialectical thinking in the West, "the bigger the front, the bigger the back," the shadow is often longer than the thing, and everything carries the seed of its own demise, Thus, strength is eventually weakness.
ReplyDeleteThe wave of neoliberalism is cresting and therefore seems most powerful, because the wave following it is eclipsed.
When a country like the US goes against its fundamental principles, and the elite militarizes against the people, their end is nigh and so is profound change.
Again, read Ravi Batra, The Next Golden Age: The Coming Revolution against Political Corruption and Economic Chaos (2007).
According to Batra, we are now is the end period of the final phase of a four phase cycle, culminating in rule by the acquisitors with cooperation of laborers. That cooperation is coming to an end, and with the end of the cycle. The transition is led into the first phase of the new cycle by warriors and this phase is characterized by the rule of a warrior elite. The warriors are not necessarily military, but the brave who are courageous enough to stand up to the soon to be former ruling acquisitive class, as did the colonial elite in standing up to the King of England, when Britain was one of the mightiest nations on earth. And they won.
Strauss & Howe also see a "fourth turning" in America generationally in a book by the title (1997), they too forecast a transition socially and politically, and say it could take many directions and so it's difficult (in 1997) to say which way will manifest.
Youth is tending the libertarian direction (but not necessarily LIbertarian), that is, away from authoritarianism, and the US tends to more left leaning than right in the traditional historical sense of those terms since its a liberal democracy, a government "of the people, for the people, and by the people."
Demographically, the presently configured GOP is finished in ten to twenty years when its predominant majority of old white men go the way of time, and America emerges as predominantly multicultural and multi-ethnic society, looking as much to Asia, Latin America, and Africa as to the UK and European continent.
Strauss & Howe see the coming transition as a several decade period, although the starting point was imprecise at the time. I would venture to say that the transition began with the Bush presidency and 9/11, and was propelled forward sharply by the election of the first non-European US president, largely through the dynamism of youth, his own and his young supporters.
Is American youth souring on Obama? To a degree maybe, but I think that most recognize that he was also hampered by an obstructionist opposition and a two party system that has become in effect a one party-two faction system controlled by the rich and powerful through existing institutional arrangements. It seem that many young people realize that the problem lies with the institutional arrangements and that change cannot come until those arrangements are changed.
As one of my teachers used to say, "It's darkest before the dawn." As someone who has served as officer of the deck, I can attest that first light is along time coming on a trans-oceanic voyage. But it always comes right on time and the bustle of new day begins soon after, as the sun rises anew. No matter how many sunrises one sees, the sun always rises anew. Every time is as if miraculous.
Hi Tom,
ReplyDeleteI agree with your latest comment. I especially see the youth heading toward urban areas to live, and not too keen on excessive law enforcement especially with regard to social issues.
Saw this via "Mike the Mad Biologist" blog, definitely not in favor of corporate communist:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/founding-fathers-quotes-you-probably.html
And another interesting fact:
http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/bloomberg_inflates_the_regulat.php
"More than 83 percent of the new regulatory-agency jobs since 1980 came in the Department of Homeland Security, and almost all of those DHS jobs were created after 2000."
jeg3: I especially see the youth heading toward urban areas to live"
ReplyDeleteUrbanization is happening very quickly on a global scale as agriculture is industrialized globally. And as productivity increases rapidly in manufacturing, the global economy is fast becoming a service economy. And as automation and robotic are also increasing productivity in the service sector, human labor is becoming less and less needed and therefore less and less valuable economically.
The labor theory of value even in an updated form is becoming less relevant to reality. With labor share decreasing as a cost, labor share of income is also falling. This is going to require a new social, political and economic paradigm to deal with or the result will be either a totalitarian society in which the have-not's are repressed by force and "bread and circuses," or a new paradigm possibly resulting from revolt in a worse case scenario. The worst case scenario is global unrest leading to social breakdown on a massive scale.
Whatever happens and however this plays out, all the children born in the early 21st century are going to be witnesses to this, and some will voluntary participants, while others will become embroiled involuntary.
My grandparents were alive at the time of the US Civil War, although not in the US yet. When parents were children the world was still on gas lamps, horse-drawn vehicles and iceboxes. They were witness the introduction of scaled access to electricity, modern appliance, movies, cars, and radio, and TV. My mother, who lived to be over 100, even saw the transition to the digital age. And, of course, two world wars, Korea, and Vietnam, an my mother the first Iraq war, which we watched on TV. The coming changes will be as great and as stark.
Hi Tom,
ReplyDeleteI calculated that even with 10 B people and restoring ecosystems can be done using:
-well designed urban areas
-solar & Gen IV nuclear
-urban & vertical farms
-factory construction of buildings.
-3d manufacturing
-there are likely to be ideas and technologies we can't imagine today, or are in a lab.
You may see the changes if you have good longevity genes and with advances in medical technologies.
Right. jeg3. It can be done with the will, but mustering the collective will of humanity in a scaled and coordinated way will be an impossible challenge unless disaster threatens. Otherwise getting there is going to require a long period of gradual deterioration of physical assets and economic readjustment. Hopefully, humanity will rise to the challenge since extraordinary international cooperation will be required, and under duress the "snake brain" takes control. What cognitive science is showing is that the higher levels of brain function serve the lower since they are more connected with primal evolutionary tendencies, especially survival. So the question is whether people can collectively keep their cool and get above the more primal responses that signal, "It's everyone for themselves," as happens when an army is routed and cannot beat an orderly retreat or pull back and mount a defense.
ReplyDelete