There you have it. But let's wait and see if actions back the words. So I would put a question mark at the end of the post title.
Strategic Culture Foundation
Brussels Rises in Revolt Against Washington: a Turning Point in the US-European Relationship
Alex Gorka
See also
CNBC
- The left-wing Five Star Movement and the far-right Lega released their plans for the next executive Friday morning.
- The plan would potentially end more than two months of political instability in the third largest euro zone economy.
- The agreement, revealed Friday, also called for an end to EU sanctions on Russia.
Italy’s incoming government wants to lift Russia sanctions and rewrite EU rules
Silvia Amaro
Italy’s economy was in the toilet from 2000 to 2012, but it has been strong since then. Therefore Italy does not have to submit to the Troika’s diktats.
ReplyDeleteAnd now that the 5-star movement is in power, we can expect to see good things from Italy. The 5-star movement is quasi-socialist, but it has formed a coalition with the Liga Nord (Northern League) which is nationalist / populist.
Nationalists? Socialists? Soon the corporate media outlets will start calling Italy’s new government National Socialist -- i.e. “Nazis.” (I’m not joking.)
Keep in mind that northern and southern Italy are two different worlds. Their customs are different, their food is different -- in fact, the only thing that unites them is the Italian language. Hence this alliance is momentous between the “Liga” in the north, and the 5-star movement in the south, and it worries the Troika a**holes in Brussels and Frankfurt. Will Italy escape the a**holes’ tyranny?
CNBC says: “Under an accord signed in the city of Maastricht in 1992, European countries are supposed to comply with euro-wide fiscal rules. This means that their debt-to-GDP ratio should not exceed 60 percent, and their public accounts should not register a deficit above 3 percent of GDP. Italy's debt stands at about 132 percent of GDP and the country registered a deficit of 2.3 percent in 2017.”
Really? CNBC says that Italy’s debt is 132 percent of GDP? Italy has a sizeable trade surplus. Each month an average of 4 billion more euros flow into Italy than flow out of Italy. Hence there is no need for the Italian government to be in debt. If the government is actually in debt, then previous administrations were truly evil. They spent those 4 billion euros per month (and more) on themselves and their cronies. No wonder they were swept out.
Here’s the thing: when a country’s economy is destroyed (e.g. Greece) the people focus on sheer survival. They don’t have the energy to care about government corruption. But when an economy is strong (e.g. Italy), the masses will not tolerate government corruption. That’s why the 5-start movement and the Northern League got into power.
Repeat: If a country’s government fails to keep the masses poor and enslaved, then the masses will not tolerate government corruption. Previous Italian administrations were evil, but they forgot to keep the Italian masses in poverty. And so the Italian masses voted them out. The US and UK governments avoid this by keeping the Anglo-American masses trapped in a sewer.
Meanwhile the Troika a**holes are issuing all kinds of threats against Italy’s new government. European Commissioner Valdis Drombroskis says that Italy’s government must submit to him or else. Or else what? This will be interesting to watch.
(Drombroskis is a minor eurocrat in the European Commission. All power in the euro-zone rests with the IMF in Washington, the European Commission in Brussels, and ESPECIALLY the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. Meanwhile the European Parliament in Strasbourg France has no power at all. It is merely symbolic. European Parliament members are elected, but powerless. European Commission members have power, but they are not elected. They are appointed by the European Central Bank in Frankfurt.)
CNBC mentions the “migrant crisis” in Italy. This is a common trick among corporate media outlets. They keep the masses divided, weak, and impoverished by focusing on things like the “migrant crisis” and “gay rights” and “#MeToo” and “anti-Semitism.” Whatever it takes to keep the masses arguing with each other, instead of uniting against their rich owners.
Trumps actions aren't "aimed" anywhere except at his own survival and ego. He shoots off his mouth, waffles, the does whatever his handlers tell him to do.
ReplyDeleteHe isn't smart enough to to have a coherent vision, strong enough to carry one out, or savvy enough to shut his pie hole. Trump is not driving the bus. Then again, neither was BO.
I can't wait for Franko to start crying about 23D chess ...
“Trump does whatever his handlers tell him to do.” ~ Noah Wary
ReplyDeleteYou are correct. I was speaking figuratively.
The U.S. President is mere window dressing. The President might have a bit of power over trivial little things, but when it comes to war, or Wall Street bailouts, the U.S. President follows orders from the bankers, the oligarchs, the generals, and the entrenched bureaucrats.
Trump himself doesn’t care about anything except his personal vanity.
Apologies for misspelling your name. I was typing too fast.
ReplyDeleteEurope cannot ignore US sanctions against Iran. Already big companies like Maersk and Total are pulling out.
ReplyDeleteGreece was a false flag in so many ways. Show me a successful economy with Marxist government?
Thinking back if Greece would have abandoned euro that would have discouraged many future attempts by others.
I may be missing something but I cannot see how Brussels can stop Italy. Judging by all the signals coming out of EU debt crisis is the last thing they want. On the other hand I cannot see Italy not revolting, their coalition contract is such that they have to. 780 euros UBI, short term treasuries with no interest that can be used to pay taxes. They want to kick out 500 000 illegals. The resistance to establishment is more on mass immigration in Europe than it is on economic issues (Italy might be exception to the rule). Voters don't understand economy, mass immigration they understand.
I would consider Five Star left wing myself but they are centre-right by most newspapers.
ReplyDeleteUS public hates Iran with a passion:
ReplyDeletehttp://news.gallup.com/poll/116236/iran.aspx
Trump is again right in tune with the US citizen...
No “oligarchy!”...
"Already big companies like Maersk and Total are pulling out. "
ReplyDeleteThe small amount of marginal business that Iran represents is not worth the risk of losing all their US share of business...
this may continue to the point where these once major European based multinationals re-domicile to the US now with the new US corporate tax laws and US exports set to explode (brand new NFL stadium in Atlanta is "Mercedes Benz Stadium"... is there one in Germany?)
and the ECB slowly destroying the EZ economy by continued ZIRP and 30b Reserve Assets at zero rate of return per month being forced on the banks there...
Doesnt look good for EZ and meanwhile Trump has nothing but daggers towards the UK for the MI6 role in the coup against him while the perps continue to walk around with impunity... May doesnt understand this as a career civil servant...
“Greece was a false flag in so many ways.”
ReplyDeleteCan an entire nation be a false flag operation? Please explain.
“Show me a successful economy with Marxist government.”
Please define a “Marxist government,” preferably with an example.
“Thinking back if Greece would have abandoned euro that would have discouraged many future attempts by others.”
Greece adopted the euro on 1 Jan 2001. I don’t know what is meant by “attempts.”
“I may be missing something but I cannot see how Brussels can stop Italy.”
Under the terms of the 1992 Treaty on European Union (also known as the Maastricht Treaty), the European Commission determines the fiscal rules for all member nations. If Brussels (i.e. the European Commission) decides that Italy is violating those rules, then Brussels can penalize Italy in several ways. Whether Italy submits to this pressure is a different matter.
“Judging by all the signals coming out of EU debt crisis is the last thing they want.”
My comments above were not regarding the overall European Union, which has 28 nations, but only the euro-zone, whose 19 nations use the euro. Nations in the euro-zone that have trade deficits (e.g. France and Greece) have a debt crisis. This crisis is unavoidable, since they can no longer create their own currencies out of thin air.
“On the other hand I cannot see Italy not revolting, their coalition contract is such that they have to. 780 euros UBI, short term treasuries with no interest that can be used to pay taxes.”
Comment is unintelligible.
“They want to kick out 500,000 illegals. The resistance to establishment is more on mass immigration in Europe than it is on economic issues (Italy might be exception to the rule). Voters don't understand economy, mass immigration they understand.”
Immigration laws in Europe are determined by local governments within the boundaries set by the European Commission. Europeans who are not happy about immigration are actually unhappy with European Commission, and with their own government’s submission to the European Commission.
I agree that most European voters don’t understand the economy, but this failing is a global phenomenon. The mass refusal to understand economics is the reason why we have rich and poor.
Europe cannot ignore US sanctions against Iran. Already big companies like Maersk and Total are pulling out.
ReplyDeleteA Chinese company is stepping to replace Total. That won't be coming back.
China is repacking US soybeans with Russian. That won't be coming back either.
Once a supplier becomes unreliable it is permanently replaced.
I live in Iowa and Iowa farmers are going ballistic over this.
China is obviously target Trump's base and it is working.
“Show me a successful economy with Marxist government.”
ReplyDeleteChina has a Marxist government in which the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) holds all the reins of power, and Karl Marx is China's Adam Smith.
China has experienced the most explosive growth ever witnessed and is now the world's second largest economy.
Westerners are puzzled, and the pundits have been predicting China's collapse on a regular basis for years.
Now China is saying that it's Marxist model is superior to the Smithian/neoclassical model, and countries should think about adopting it, to fit their own country's national characteristics
Tom, China is anything but Marxist. Capitalism rules that country.
ReplyDeleteSo they would like Americans to think.
If you were in going to school in China or a member of the CCP, you would be studying Marx as the guide to the countries social, political and economic policy. If you were in business in China, you would have CCP cadres looking over your shoulder.
"Countries..." should be "country's social, political and economic policy"
ReplyDeleteKristjan,
ReplyDeletedont you know Marx invented the permanent current account surplus?????
Chapter 3 of Das Kapital includes the details of how to construct a trapeze netting around the base of your slave factory 12 story dormitories so the workers dont kill themselves by jumping off....
You know Tom, how the Marxist start their newspaper articles in Estonia. I will give you an example:
ReplyDeleteTen years ago the most bought booklet (non literature) in US was Marx and Engels Communist Manifesto. (then the reader goes already: ohoo, in America and we think he is a bad guy).They go on:
US universities very often have programs where students discuss the ideas of J. S. Mill, Hitler, John Locke and Marx. … and they go on and on, so not only in China Tom. I have not studied Marx's economic theory in university but I have studied him as a sociologist. I've read Marx's economic theory later. As far as his economic theory goes it is garbage, I don't believe that they follow that in China. He had no theory of communism or socialism, he criticized capitalism and frankly he was on a right track in a lot of times.
Marxists want to get rid of private means of production, how well that has worked out everywhere we all know.
The bottom line for Marxists is the class struggle.
ReplyDeleteChina is now having to confront class with the rising middle class and the ascendancy of a top tier and their heirs, that earned nothing themselves. This is a fine line in maintaining market socialism. We'll have to wait and see how it unfolds.
There has been a huge debate since Marx & Engles wrote and it is still raging. That debate is not of crucial interest to me but I follow it to some degree since it is of philosophical interest. I view Marx chiefly as a philosopher rather than economist, since this is the way he saw himself.
Marx viewed philosophy conceived in the Western tradition since Socrates as a reflection on experience as insufficient if not misguided.
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it. ― Theses on Feuerbach, Thesis 11. This is the epitaph on Marx's tomb.
Marx has probably done more to change the world than any other single thinker. So in that sense he has been a great success in his conception of the purpose of philosophy.
And this ongoing dialectic is far from over. Capitalism as the "end of history"? No way.
So what's next. Marx posited socialism for a simple reason. There are three factors of production — nature ("land"), labor, and capital. The agricultural age was dominated by ownership of land and control of territory (feudalism). The industrial age has been dominated by ownership of the industrial means of production (capitalism). So Max concluded that the next period will be dominated by labor (socialism).
If Marx was correct that depends on the next change in the mode of production.
There have been three great periods of human history previously, based on the dominant mode of production. The question is whether the world is potentially entering a new one, and if so, what it is likely to be. There seems to be reason to think that we are on a cusp or approaching one.
1. Hunting/gathering - tribal society
2. Agriculture - feudalism
3. Industry - capitalism
4. Information - socialism?
Again, we'll have to wait and see. Quoting Hegel, ""The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.
“Marxists want to get rid of private means of production, how well that has worked out everywhere we all know.” ~ Kristjan
ReplyDeleteAt the other extreme is the Kristjan-cretin, who wants nothing but private means of production, so that a handful of oligarchs own everything and everyone. How well that has worked out everywhere we all know.
You’re out of your depth, little one.
Marx and Engels were able historians as well as observers of current affairs. M & E realized that the lynch pin was the petite bourgeoisie , or small business in today's idiom.
ReplyDeleteWhile M & E advocated abolishing bourgeois ownership of property just as the French Revolution had abolished feudal property, they distinguished between the haute and petite bourgeoisie.
They viewed the real interest of the petite bourgeoisie (small business people) to lie with the proletariat (workers). But the petite bourgeois identified with the haute bourgeoisie as owners of industry and technology, emulated them and sought to rise to that level themselves, even though that was out of reach for most of them.
So M & E emphasized socializing the large firms that were essentially oligopolies and oligopsonies by virtue of their size owing to economies of scale. They didn't face meaningful competition since they were so capital intensive and protected by intellectual property, etc.
This is similar to the introduction of anti-trust legislation under progressive governments under capitalism.
M & E viewed the elimination of wage-labor a sine qua non of developed communism but they saw this as the outcome of an organic process through the operation of the historical dialectic.
Marx was later interpreted by Lenin, Stalin, etc. in Russia, and Mao in China. M & E were never that specific about it. And history shows that abolishing all private property was a bad idea. This doesn't mean that an organic process cannot or will not result in the abolition of wage-labor and in effect the concept of primate property in terms of 18th century liberalism. I have argued that this would necessarily be the result of an expansion of the level of collective consciousness.
The Chinese leadership came to understand that Marxism-Leninism and Mao where wrong about a strict conception of private property. One can have limited private property in a socialistic system. Under Deng, China began relaxing the no private property at all rule to permit small holdings. But control of industry remains public rather than private.
Now the US is complaining that this gives Chinese industry a non-competive advantage over Western large private firms, when up until now the argument was the public ownership was not as efficient and effective as private, since government control did not measure up to control in competitive industry.
ReplyDeleteKristjan:Thinking back if Greece would have abandoned euro that would have discouraged many future attempts by others.
Why? I think their success would have encouraged others, and hopefully destroyed the Eurozone.
There is an enormous amount of garbage in the Marxist tradition, an enormous amount of idiotic bickering and foolishness. But there is a great deal of enormous value there too.
I'm with Tom. China still is Marxist, still insists on "the leading role of the Communist party". The "private" owners of the means of production are not in control the way they are here, which is usually exaggerated imho even.
TOM HICKEY WRITES: “History shows that abolishing all private property was a bad idea.”
ReplyDeleteYes. With pure communism (no privately property) we all end up enslaved by a handful of party bosses and apparatchiks. At the other extreme is feudalism, in which we all end up enslaved by a handful of rich oligarchs.
I advocate a balance between the extremes. This balance can never be perfectly achieved, but we can continually strive for it by being very careful about what we allow to be privately owned (e.g. your car or your house) and what we do not allow to be privately owned (e.g. utilities, prisons, police and fire departments, and so on).
If any business becomes a monopoly, we must not allow it to be privately owned, since the profit motive will eventually suck up all resources, and will destroy the nation.
The USA has a mixed economy, with a strong (and growing) trend toward feudalism. If we criticize this madness, and we advocate for a balance, the idiots out there accuse us of being extreme communists. This is how the idiots enslave themselves. They claim that their slavery is freedom, and that toiling on the plantation is the good life. They claim that freedom is slavery. That is, they claim that the only alternative to the plantation is death. They smugly boast that, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” even though rich people enjoy a free lunch during their entire lives. They are the Matt Phrankos of the world.
TOM HICKEY WRITES: “I have argued that this would necessarily be the result of an expansion of the level of collective consciousness.”
Yes. As a species we must adapt or die. We must expand the level of collective consciousness, or else we will face extinction or a dystopia. No “system” or “model” will work.
We are monkeys that have overcrowded and polluted our zoo cage so badly that if we don’t develop enough intelligence to escape our cage, we are doomed.
Humans and chimps supposedly share 99% of DNA. It’s the 1% that makes a difference. We need an additional 1% change.
TOM HICKEY WRITES: “The Chinese leadership came to understand that Marxism-Leninism and Mao where wrong about a strict conception of private property. One can have limited private property in a socialistic system. Under Deng, China began relaxing the no private property at all rule to permit small holdings. But control of industry remains public rather than private.”
Yes. China has many privately owned firms, but the control of overall industries (each of which includes many private firms) is public.
TOM HICKEY WRITES: “Now the US is complaining that this gives Chinese industry a competitive advantage over Western large private firms, when up until now the argument was the public ownership was not as efficient and effective as private, since government control did not measure up to control in competitive industry.”
Yes, we see this also in Western airline companies who treat their passengers horribly, and who whine that foreign airlines offer vastly superior service because they are government-owned (e.g. Qatar Airways, Emirates Airlines).
State-owned airlines seek to boost market share by making passengers as comfortable as possible. By contrast, privately owned airlines (especially in the USA) seek to squeeze as much profits as possible out of passengers. They treat passengers and their own personnel like shyte. (Granted, some privately owned airline companies are worse than others.)
What I say here will make little sense to anyone who has personally not experienced the difference between state-owned airlines and privately owned airlines. Both seek to make a profit, but they each have a different approach.
Likewise, people complain that RT is state-owned, while they forget that the BBC is also state-owned.
"Now the US is complaining that this gives Chinese industry a non-competive advantage over Western large private firms, when up until now the argument was the public ownership was not as efficient and effective as private, since government control did not measure up to control in competitive industry."
ReplyDeleteHow do you spell hypocrisy?
"While M & E advocated abolishing bourgeois ownership of property just as the French Revolution had abolished feudal property, they distinguished between the haute and petite bourgeoisie."
ReplyDeleteShow me the line Tom in Marx writing. What is the petite bourgeoisie?
Marx was very much against the Gotha Program (social democrats in Germany)
"Between the capitalist and the communist systems of society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. This corresponds to a political transition period, whose State can be nothing else but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat."
We had 50 years of that "dictatorship of the proletariat" it was nothing nice, of course It wasn't the real thing like always with Marxists, let's try it again.
"Kristjan:Thinking back if Greece would have abandoned euro that would have discouraged many future attempts by others.
Why? I think their success would have encouraged others, and hopefully destroyed the Eurozone."
No I think they would have screwed it up like Marxists always have. China is no Marxist, this is an illusion that Marxists want to believe since everywhere they gain power the deserts are running out of sand. Unfortunately MMT attracts communists even though none of the MMT academics are Marxists or communists.
"What is the petite bourgeoisie?"
ReplyDeleteThe lower strata of the middle class — the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants — all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialised skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.
Communist Manifesto, ch. 1
"Show me the line Tom in Marx writing."
All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change consequent upon the change in historical conditions.
The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favour of bourgeois property.
The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.
In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.
Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.
Or do you mean the modern bourgeois private property?
But does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage labour. Let us examine both sides of this antagonism.
To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social status in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion.
Capital is therefore not only personal; it is a social power.
When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class character.
Communist Manifesto, ch 2
I've seen Randy Wray face to face and he said to me that UBI is something that Marxists push to destroy capitalist production system. Does that sound like he is communist or Marxist to you? Do not let this little rant here bother you of the MMT communist wing, MMT is certainly not communist or Marxist.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly though, the MMT JG price anchor pegs the value of money to the cost of labor, specifically an hour or unskilled labor as the basic unit to prevent owners from driving the wage under that by employing the government's monopoly over the currency to set price by making an offer to purchase any quantity at that price.
So while it is in the capitalist model of production, it undermines the basis of that mode of production by giving workers bargaining power. Increased bargaining power limit the ability of firms to determine profit share independently of labor, which ultimately leads to falling profit rate, which Marx predicted as integral in leading to capitalism's failure.
It's "subversive."
This is one problem humans face. Mind! Full of phantasy like the royal wedding, and ideology. The biggest illusion is the ‘human ego’ – the ‘I’; the next, the concepts we carry around like so much useless baggage. From the minute we enter the planet the personality is programmed: - we are told what it means to be human, what it means to be alive, what we should do. People are not really mentally sufficient, because they do not use their mental faculties independently. Instead, most act and react emotionally. Who is bold enough to wipe all of that conditioning from the mind and start from a clean slate: - I am a human being 1) where did I come from 2) why am I alive 3) what should I do 4) when I die, what will happen to me. The Buddha was a very honest human being and sat down, vowing not to get up again until he found out. He had a focus.
ReplyDeleteHe did not consult a book. He went inside and found out for himself. He was not a ‘believer’. Nothing else would do other than his own experience. Not what someone else wanted to shove down his throat because that is what they were conditioned to do. He had to experience it for himself. To lift the collective consciousness, he first had to lift his own. Today we are all recipe readers, but not cooks.
That’s the kind of human being that inspires me .... :-) !! I laugh every time I read Kabir or listen to Prem.
Even for an intellect that is free, it’s like a little torch trying to find its way from one side of the universe to another. That’s not going to work. ‘Mind is the slayer of the real’. On this tiny little earth, whizzing around the Sun, we just make stuff up .... nothing wrong with that, except believing it to be reality. Technology is just a good tool.
At the very least, we should learn how to play nice. And you know I think this is only possible through the human heart. Experience first, then comes the understanding.
MMT is set within capitalism and is in no sense "Marxist," although it does incorporate analytical concepts that could called "Marxian," or at at least consistent with Marx and inconsistent with conventional economic theory.
ReplyDeleteMagpie, Marx + MMT
Scott Ferguson, Some Remarks on MMT & Marxism in Light of David Harvey’s “Marx, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason”
Bill Mitchell, Somewhat of a Marxist
Bill Mitchell, We need to read Karl Marx
Peter Cooper, MARX & MMT, PART 1 – Three Kinds of Macro Variables
Peter Cooper, Marx’s View of Production in Relation to MMT and Taxes
Sam Seder and Richard Wolff, How Marxism and Modern Monetary Theory Go Hand-In-Hand
Chris Dillow, JOB GUARANTEE: MARXIST OR KEYNESIAN?
John Laurits, Marx + MMT: Socialism Through a Self-Managed Federal Job Guarantee
What did Marx ever build?
ReplyDeleteAnother Art major non-materialist clarinet player... all they know how to do is F everything (matetrial) up...
What did Marx ever build?
ReplyDeleteHe just changed the world.
What did Jesus ever build, or Muhammad, or Buddha? All artists?
"MMT is set within capitalism and is in no sense "Marxist," although it does incorporate analytical concepts that could called "Marxian," or at at least consistent with Marx and inconsistent with conventional economic theory."
ReplyDeleteThat is not It Tom. So they can say about anything, workers rights, abolition of child labor, social security etc, that doesn't mean we live in a Marxist society.
Marxism is about class struggle and a classless society. Marxist economics is about eliminating surplus value. A key issue in this is the labor theory of value that explains surplus value and how it is expropriated in feudalism through slavery and serfdom and in capitalism through wage labor.
ReplyDeleteMarxian economics is about eliminating economic rent, which is a class issue.
MMT does not address these issues.
MMT policy increases economic rent through accommodation that leads to wealth concentration, as Egmont has explained.
But MMT does provide a way to move way from neoliberalism, which is a step in the right direction within the box.
Marxism and Marxian thought is about escaping from the box.
MMT doesn't address that.
TOM HICKEY WRITES: “Marxian economics is about eliminating economic rent, which is a class issue. MMT does not address these issues.”
ReplyDeleteCorrect. The theory of aerodynamics explains how an aircraft gets into the air. The theory is neutral about disparities in aircraft luxury. Likewise, MMT explains the raw basics of money. MMT is neutral about class issues and economic rents.
To call MMT “Marxist” is to not understand MMT or Marxism.
MMT and Marxism are yin and yang. We need both.
TOM HICKEY WRITES: “MMT policy increases economic rent through accommodation that leads to wealth concentration, as Egmont has explained.”
Correct. If we do not also address class conflict and economic rent, then MMT will do us little good, and may make us worse off.
TOM HICKEY WRITES: “But MMT does provide a way to move way from neoliberalism, which is a step in the right direction within the box.”
MMT is a step in the right direction because it dispels neoliberal lies such as
[1] There is no money for social programs that help average people.
[2] The U.S. government runs on loans and on tax revenue.
[3] Programs like Social Security are unsustainable unless they are privatized
[4] A federal budget surplus is stimulative
[5] The U.S. government has a debt crisis.