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Yup! Fortunately you don't even have to read it from cover to cover to get the meat of it. Here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZIINXhGDcs https://www.youtube

Yup! Fortunately you don't even have to read it from cover to cover to get the meat of it. Here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZIINXhGDcs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZIINXhGDcs is a talk 80 mins long Graeber gave at Google. Then once you've done that listen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y_wz85ViLY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y_wz85ViLY to Robert Paul Wolff talk about the problem Ricardo, Smith, and Marx tackled. This one is a bit longer and it is tougher going but the pay-off is immense. –– What this New York Times article and the recent Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-21/why-wages-aren-t-growing https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-21/why-wages... (“Why Wages Aren't Growing”) article that hit the front page here have in common is that they both refuse to recognise that Marx's critique of capital was correct in his day and it _remains_ correct. The next part is important. We _must_ separate the critique from his proposed solution. To be very clear I can agree with Marx's critique but I do not have to agree that central collectivisation is the solution. The very simple observation is this. For-profit capitalism over time will cause (a) workers to be exploited to the point where they can't actually take part in the society they're a part of (which hurts the capitalist too!) and (b) wealth gets concentrated inefficiently. What the New York Times and Bloomberg (and many others) outright refuse to admit is that _Marx was right_. Universal Basic Income. What is that but an alternate solution to collectivisation? Same applies to profit-sharing. It's the reason why charities are non-profits because we all recognise the alternative would be unseemly. The Tobin tax (taxing certain international financial transactions) is another solution. As are regressive tax regimes that hit the wealthiest hardest. Consider also alternate forms of incorporation like cooperatives. And so on. What all these have in common is that they try to address the flaw at the heart of capitalism. The sooner we stop calling people communists for putting forward sane solutions the better. If we don't address this there will be ruin and revolution and when that happens we'll have a messy rather graceful transition to a fairer society.

tim333 9y ago
One of the troubles with saying Marx was right or wrong is the "Marx/Engels Collected Works" go on for 50 volumes so no doubt some bits are right and some wrong. You really need to be more specific for it to mean much. As to wage growth, it seems to be about 3% a year in the US at the moment and 13% in Hungary suggesting it depends on various factors rather than falling everywhere because capitalism.
- igravious 9y ago
  I am not saying that everything Marx/Engels ever said was correct. To reiterate. My specific point about Marx is this. Given capital, given private property – his analysis/critique about for-profit capitalism is correct. And critique pertains to essentially free and fair markets, let alone markets distorted by too little or too much regulation or markets distorted by cartels, oligopolies, monopolies, cronyism, and so forth. Marx's point is that even when capitalism is operating in its _ideal_ state it is a system where wealth will inefficiently accrue to a minority (the rentier class) and where those who do not have a handle on the means of production will get progressively more exploited because -as your turn of phrase goes- profit. It's that simple. You counterpoints are meaningless in the face of the very well documented and ever-widening pay gap between workers on the bottom rungs of the ladder and those towards the top.
  - tim333 9y ago
    I'll give you that without intervention the rentiers can get richer. However that can be countered by progressive taxation and similar and has been successfully including in the US up till the 60s or so. You can mostly fix it without going all Marxist and Marxism as such doesn't have a good record at fixing things. See The Black Book of Communism, Venezuela and the like. As an aside there are things that bug me about Marx and his style of reasoning. Both the hundreds of pages so its hard to say you're for or against. Also nearly all his statments are slightly off eg. "The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly." By his definition is you don't have rental income you are "proletarian" and so selling yourself hourly or daily. Which doesn't seem quite right - ok you may get a job but it's not quite like that. It slightly amazes and saddens me that people took this stuff seriously and it went on to cause so many deaths and do this day messes with clear thinking analyses of poverty and the like.
    - igravious 9y ago
      Yup. I should have said `progressive' taxation in my earlier post, not `regressive' taxation. (I'm going to reply to myself to flag that.) In this we are in agreement. > I'll give you that without intervention the rentiers can get richer. This is a central claim of Marx! Those anti-Marx claim "it'll be okay because <some form of trickle-down economics>" or "you'll discourage entrepreneurs" or "taxes are theft!" or some other variant. What I'm trying to show is that you can agree with this part of Marx but reject his solution – state-run collectivisation or communism or whatever you want to call it. The trick is to not throw the baby out with the bath water. "The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly." Sell himself means sell his own toil, his own labo(u)r. If you are fortunate enough to have some form of rental income then your _capital_ is doing the work, ergo you are not part of the proletariat. I think that's pretty clear, no? Marxism != Communism Marxism != Anti-capitalist If you want for-profit capitalism to succeed you have to be partly Marxist, that's the irony given the way these terms have been bent out of shape. The fault-line of "property is theft!" from one side and "taxation is theft!" from the other to my mind illuminates the entire discussion. :)
igravious 9y ago
> As are regressive tax regimes that hit the wealthiest hardest. brain-fart – that should read progressive not regressive of course. suppose that's clear enough from the context but for the record …

tim333 9y ago

One of the troubles with saying Marx was right or wrong is the "Marx/Engels Collected Works" go on for 50 volumes so no doubt some bits are right and some wrong. You really need to be more specific for it to mean much. As to wage growth, it seems to be about 3% a year in the US at the moment and 13% in Hungary suggesting it depends on various factors rather than falling everywhere because capitalism.

igravious 9y ago
I am not saying that everything Marx/Engels ever said was correct. To reiterate. My specific point about Marx is this. Given capital, given private property – his analysis/critique about for-profit capitalism is correct. And critique pertains to essentially free and fair markets, let alone markets distorted by too little or too much regulation or markets distorted by cartels, oligopolies, monopolies, cronyism, and so forth. Marx's point is that even when capitalism is operating in its _ideal_ state it is a system where wealth will inefficiently accrue to a minority (the rentier class) and where those who do not have a handle on the means of production will get progressively more exploited because -as your turn of phrase goes- profit. It's that simple. You counterpoints are meaningless in the face of the very well documented and ever-widening pay gap between workers on the bottom rungs of the ladder and those towards the top.
- tim333 9y ago
  I'll give you that without intervention the rentiers can get richer. However that can be countered by progressive taxation and similar and has been successfully including in the US up till the 60s or so. You can mostly fix it without going all Marxist and Marxism as such doesn't have a good record at fixing things. See The Black Book of Communism, Venezuela and the like. As an aside there are things that bug me about Marx and his style of reasoning. Both the hundreds of pages so its hard to say you're for or against. Also nearly all his statments are slightly off eg. "The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly." By his definition is you don't have rental income you are "proletarian" and so selling yourself hourly or daily. Which doesn't seem quite right - ok you may get a job but it's not quite like that. It slightly amazes and saddens me that people took this stuff seriously and it went on to cause so many deaths and do this day messes with clear thinking analyses of poverty and the like.
  - igravious 9y ago
    Yup. I should have said `progressive' taxation in my earlier post, not `regressive' taxation. (I'm going to reply to myself to flag that.) In this we are in agreement. > I'll give you that without intervention the rentiers can get richer. This is a central claim of Marx! Those anti-Marx claim "it'll be okay because <some form of trickle-down economics>" or "you'll discourage entrepreneurs" or "taxes are theft!" or some other variant. What I'm trying to show is that you can agree with this part of Marx but reject his solution – state-run collectivisation or communism or whatever you want to call it. The trick is to not throw the baby out with the bath water. "The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly." Sell himself means sell his own toil, his own labo(u)r. If you are fortunate enough to have some form of rental income then your _capital_ is doing the work, ergo you are not part of the proletariat. I think that's pretty clear, no? Marxism != Communism Marxism != Anti-capitalist If you want for-profit capitalism to succeed you have to be partly Marxist, that's the irony given the way these terms have been bent out of shape. The fault-line of "property is theft!" from one side and "taxation is theft!" from the other to my mind illuminates the entire discussion. :)

igravious 9y ago

> As are regressive tax regimes that hit the wealthiest hardest. brain-fart – that should read progressive not regressive of course. suppose that's clear enough from the context but for the record …