7 ms·

Any other book recommendations for a counter to Sowell's Basic Economics? It would be a good exercise to read his book and an alternative.

wry_discontent 6y ago
For this community? Das Kapital. For something less rigorous and more accessible, probably something by Richard Wolff, but I'm not familiar enough w/ his writings to recommend anything specific.
- alexarnesen 6y ago
  I see you recommended the heavy work, not just the propaganda pamphlet - good. I haven't read Das Kapital and I should. However... My question: an oft repeated refrain, when Marx is touted as a reasonable alternative, is that any time anyone tried his ideas out, it was a total disaster (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Chavez). I have watched some Wolff on Youtube, as well as other lectures on Marxism, because I'm interested and relatively agnostic on the economic spectrum. But I never see this point (tens of millions dead due to internal issues, in these societies, in the 20th century) refuted with any scholarly heft - do you have any recommendations? I think Steven Pinker is dead on about why Marx (and other interpretations of far left economic thought such as Chomsky's flavors of anarchism) are dead in the water - they fundamentally misunderstand human nature. I'm looking for someone who sounds as clear as Pinker, that can counter this take. Any suggestions?
  - wry_discontent 6y ago
    I've seen some decent refutations of that kind of thinking by Chomsky himself. I don't have a great recommendation just because my eyes tend to glaze over when people start droning on about how xyz would be nice but iT's NoT hUmAn nAtURe. Also, I don't know how anybody could say that kind of thing about Marx, specifically Das Kapital, which is what I'm most familiar with. It doesn't delve much into human nature, it's all about modes of production and exchange and labor value.
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > My question: an oft repeated refrain, when Marx is touted as a reasonable alternative, is that any time anyone tried his ideas out, it was a total disaster (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Chavez). I've not read Marx, nor am I a Marxist, but my understanding is that most of his work is a diagnosis of a problem, not a plan for a cure. IIRC, Marx's own "plan" was basically more capitalism harder until it collapses and something ill-defined without its problems emerges from the ashes. Those people you cite (assuming they even wanted to improve anything rather than amass personal power), can probably be thought as a doctor who could correctly diagnose cancer but proposed a incorrect theory for a cure (e.g. something based on the four humors). Their failure to cure cancer doesn't mean the patient didn't have cancer or that cancer can't be cured.
    - wry_discontent 6y ago
      That's correct. Most of the implementations of Marx's ideas are heavily derived through Lenin, who wrote more thoroughly about how to actually run a post-capitalist society and what would/wouldn't work. Just to note, also, Chavez is the only person in that list who wasn't a Marxist-Leninist, and it's not helpful to understanding to include him in that list.
    - haberman 6y ago
      I don't think that analogy works: many people never get cancer which means we have a clear model for what a healthy, cancer-free life form looks like. "Curing cancer" just means returning a body to this healthy, pre-cancerous state. But we have no model for what a healthy, capitalism-free society would look like. Every attempt at removing capitalism from the system has led to totalitarian results. This doesn't prove that capitalism is the best possible system, but it strongly suggests that alternatives are worse.
      - ardy42 6y ago
        > But we have no model for what a healthy, capitalism-free society would look like. Every attempt at removing capitalism from the system has led to totalitarian results. That's not quite accurate, since capitalism hasn't always existed and markets haven't haven't always been the primary means of exchange. There's also a fairly broad range of capitalist systems with different trade offs. We also don't know if capitalism won't also ultimately lead to totalitarian results. In these discussions, we also probably need to make a distinction between capitalism and markets. You could perhaps have a society that keeps markets more-or-less as they are but "removes capitalism" by implementing a different relationship between labor and ownership, for instance. > This doesn't prove that capitalism is the best possible system, but it strongly suggests that alternatives are worse. I dispute the latter point. It's kinda like saying the failure of the iAPX 432 and Itanium strongly suggests there's no better alternative to the x86 architecture. In this case, I don't think we have much understanding about what's unknown.
  - poilcn 6y ago
    You mention Pinker, that opens question whether you've met with work of Nicolas Taleb. He is not Marxist per se, one could say he's the opposite, but he is an ardent opponent of Pinker and his kind of reasoning, so his books could've challenged Pinker's opinion on these topics as well.
    - jmeister 6y ago
      Taleb has attacked Pinker only on some technical statistics issues related to trends in violence post-Enlightenment and maybe merits of IQ. Taleb leans libertarian on large scales himself.
  - markharper 6y ago
    > My question: an oft repeated refrain, when Marx is touted as a reasonable alternative, is that any time anyone tried his ideas out, it was a total disaster (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Chavez). A couple things. Chavez is of a different category from the other three just on the amount of death under the other regimes. The question of the results of socialism and capitalism is complex. It's worth reading both historical and economically focused works to get a more nuanced view than the one that you've laid out. For a few suggestions: On historical critiques of the US-centric perspective: The Jakarta Method, Vincent Bevins The Darker Nations, Vijay Prashad A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn Economic works: Competing Economic Theories, Richard Wolff Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism, David Harvey There are more authors (Kliman, Moseley, Shaikh, etc.), but these two would be a good start. These are works with particular perspectives and should be read as such. If you want competing ideological works, read a standard history book and Hayek, Mises, Friedman, etc.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - Corazoor 6y ago
    As others have already stated, "Das Kapital" itself is a study and criticism of capitalism, and does not present much in terms of alternatives or "solutions". It is worth noting that both Marx and Engels were in favour of democracy, even going as far as saying that the actual means of production should be democratized. Both would probably be appalled by what became of their theories under Stalin and Mao... Also, as Marx got older he got less and less political active, there is even a letter where he refused to be seen as a leading figure of the communist movement. Das Kapital is from this later period of his life, and subsequently very scant on noneconomic politics...
markharper 6y ago
I'd second the other response's recommendation of Richard Wolff's work. He's a marxist and democratic socialist, so read his work understanding his perspective in relation to your own, whatever that might be. That being said, I found his book Competing Economic Theories on neoliberalism, keynsianism, and marxism to be very fair to all sides.
- ralusek 6y ago
  Richard Wolff's primary argument in favor of socialism is that your employer is stealing from you by making a profit off of your labor. He fundamentally does not understand how markets work. I am a software engineer. I have a rate of pay that I consider to be more valuable than my labor, for which I will gladly exchange my labor and feel as though I have profited from the transaction. Prospective employers have an amount of labor output that they value more than a rate of pay, for which they will gladly exchange in an attempt to profit from the transaction. We engage in a mutual arrangement, wherein we both walk away having benefitted from the transaction. The fact that the employer has the capacity to profit from my output is not theft. In fact, I would feel absolutely horrible if my employer didn't profit from me at all, because I ALWAYS profit from them.
  - markharper 6y ago
    > He fundamentally does not understand how markets work. I am a software engineer. I can assure you that the Harvard and Yale educated professor that's written textbooks on the subject knows how markets work. He might be heterodox in his adherence to marxist economics, but he fully understands the orthodox position, almost certainly in more detail than you or I ever will.
    - missedthecue 6y ago
      I think your comment is the classic appeal to authority. "He's a professor at xyz, therefore, he's right".
      - monocasa 6y ago
kiliantics 6y ago
Or if you read the debunking book first, then you won't have to waste your time with his book, since you'll understand the crux of the argument and why it's wrong.

wry_discontent 6y ago

For this community? Das Kapital. For something less rigorous and more accessible, probably something by Richard Wolff, but I'm not familiar enough w/ his writings to recommend anything specific.

alexarnesen 6y ago
I see you recommended the heavy work, not just the propaganda pamphlet - good. I haven't read Das Kapital and I should. However... My question: an oft repeated refrain, when Marx is touted as a reasonable alternative, is that any time anyone tried his ideas out, it was a total disaster (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Chavez). I have watched some Wolff on Youtube, as well as other lectures on Marxism, because I'm interested and relatively agnostic on the economic spectrum. But I never see this point (tens of millions dead due to internal issues, in these societies, in the 20th century) refuted with any scholarly heft - do you have any recommendations? I think Steven Pinker is dead on about why Marx (and other interpretations of far left economic thought such as Chomsky's flavors of anarchism) are dead in the water - they fundamentally misunderstand human nature. I'm looking for someone who sounds as clear as Pinker, that can counter this take. Any suggestions?
- wry_discontent 6y ago
  I've seen some decent refutations of that kind of thinking by Chomsky himself. I don't have a great recommendation just because my eyes tend to glaze over when people start droning on about how xyz would be nice but iT's NoT hUmAn nAtURe. Also, I don't know how anybody could say that kind of thing about Marx, specifically Das Kapital, which is what I'm most familiar with. It doesn't delve much into human nature, it's all about modes of production and exchange and labor value.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > My question: an oft repeated refrain, when Marx is touted as a reasonable alternative, is that any time anyone tried his ideas out, it was a total disaster (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Chavez). I've not read Marx, nor am I a Marxist, but my understanding is that most of his work is a diagnosis of a problem, not a plan for a cure. IIRC, Marx's own "plan" was basically more capitalism harder until it collapses and something ill-defined without its problems emerges from the ashes. Those people you cite (assuming they even wanted to improve anything rather than amass personal power), can probably be thought as a doctor who could correctly diagnose cancer but proposed a incorrect theory for a cure (e.g. something based on the four humors). Their failure to cure cancer doesn't mean the patient didn't have cancer or that cancer can't be cured.
  - wry_discontent 6y ago
    That's correct. Most of the implementations of Marx's ideas are heavily derived through Lenin, who wrote more thoroughly about how to actually run a post-capitalist society and what would/wouldn't work. Just to note, also, Chavez is the only person in that list who wasn't a Marxist-Leninist, and it's not helpful to understanding to include him in that list.
  - haberman 6y ago
    I don't think that analogy works: many people never get cancer which means we have a clear model for what a healthy, cancer-free life form looks like. "Curing cancer" just means returning a body to this healthy, pre-cancerous state. But we have no model for what a healthy, capitalism-free society would look like. Every attempt at removing capitalism from the system has led to totalitarian results. This doesn't prove that capitalism is the best possible system, but it strongly suggests that alternatives are worse.
    - ardy42 6y ago
      > But we have no model for what a healthy, capitalism-free society would look like. Every attempt at removing capitalism from the system has led to totalitarian results. That's not quite accurate, since capitalism hasn't always existed and markets haven't haven't always been the primary means of exchange. There's also a fairly broad range of capitalist systems with different trade offs. We also don't know if capitalism won't also ultimately lead to totalitarian results. In these discussions, we also probably need to make a distinction between capitalism and markets. You could perhaps have a society that keeps markets more-or-less as they are but "removes capitalism" by implementing a different relationship between labor and ownership, for instance. > This doesn't prove that capitalism is the best possible system, but it strongly suggests that alternatives are worse. I dispute the latter point. It's kinda like saying the failure of the iAPX 432 and Itanium strongly suggests there's no better alternative to the x86 architecture. In this case, I don't think we have much understanding about what's unknown.
- poilcn 6y ago
  You mention Pinker, that opens question whether you've met with work of Nicolas Taleb. He is not Marxist per se, one could say he's the opposite, but he is an ardent opponent of Pinker and his kind of reasoning, so his books could've challenged Pinker's opinion on these topics as well.
  - jmeister 6y ago
    Taleb has attacked Pinker only on some technical statistics issues related to trends in violence post-Enlightenment and maybe merits of IQ. Taleb leans libertarian on large scales himself.
- markharper 6y ago
  > My question: an oft repeated refrain, when Marx is touted as a reasonable alternative, is that any time anyone tried his ideas out, it was a total disaster (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Chavez). A couple things. Chavez is of a different category from the other three just on the amount of death under the other regimes. The question of the results of socialism and capitalism is complex. It's worth reading both historical and economically focused works to get a more nuanced view than the one that you've laid out. For a few suggestions: On historical critiques of the US-centric perspective: The Jakarta Method, Vincent Bevins The Darker Nations, Vijay Prashad A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn Economic works: Competing Economic Theories, Richard Wolff Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism, David Harvey There are more authors (Kliman, Moseley, Shaikh, etc.), but these two would be a good start. These are works with particular perspectives and should be read as such. If you want competing ideological works, read a standard history book and Hayek, Mises, Friedman, etc.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- Corazoor 6y ago
  As others have already stated, "Das Kapital" itself is a study and criticism of capitalism, and does not present much in terms of alternatives or "solutions". It is worth noting that both Marx and Engels were in favour of democracy, even going as far as saying that the actual means of production should be democratized. Both would probably be appalled by what became of their theories under Stalin and Mao... Also, as Marx got older he got less and less political active, there is even a letter where he refused to be seen as a leading figure of the communist movement. Das Kapital is from this later period of his life, and subsequently very scant on noneconomic politics...

markharper 6y ago

I'd second the other response's recommendation of Richard Wolff's work. He's a marxist and democratic socialist, so read his work understanding his perspective in relation to your own, whatever that might be. That being said, I found his book Competing Economic Theories on neoliberalism, keynsianism, and marxism to be very fair to all sides.

ralusek 6y ago
Richard Wolff's primary argument in favor of socialism is that your employer is stealing from you by making a profit off of your labor. He fundamentally does not understand how markets work. I am a software engineer. I have a rate of pay that I consider to be more valuable than my labor, for which I will gladly exchange my labor and feel as though I have profited from the transaction. Prospective employers have an amount of labor output that they value more than a rate of pay, for which they will gladly exchange in an attempt to profit from the transaction. We engage in a mutual arrangement, wherein we both walk away having benefitted from the transaction. The fact that the employer has the capacity to profit from my output is not theft. In fact, I would feel absolutely horrible if my employer didn't profit from me at all, because I ALWAYS profit from them.
- markharper 6y ago
  > He fundamentally does not understand how markets work. I am a software engineer. I can assure you that the Harvard and Yale educated professor that's written textbooks on the subject knows how markets work. He might be heterodox in his adherence to marxist economics, but he fully understands the orthodox position, almost certainly in more detail than you or I ever will.
  - missedthecue 6y ago
    I think your comment is the classic appeal to authority. "He's a professor at xyz, therefore, he's right".
    - monocasa 6y ago

kiliantics 6y ago

Or if you read the debunking book first, then you won't have to waste your time with his book, since you'll understand the crux of the argument and why it's wrong.