Socialdem. 21st Century

Chapter 15 of volume 1 of Capital is called “Machinery and Large-Scale Industry” and examines the role of machines in developed capitalist production in the 19th century. This chapter is one of the largest ones in volume 1 of Capital. My chapter summary is therefore divided into two parts. This is part 1.Marx divides the chapter into ten sections: (1) The Development of Machinery(2) The Value transferred by the Machinery to the Product(3) The Most Immediate Effects of Machine Production on...

In interesting analyses here: Dan Hannan, “Misdiagnosing the Refugee Crisis,” Washington Examiner, March 16, 2016.Fraser Nelson, “The Great Migration is a Sign of Increasing Wealth, not abject Poverty,” Spectator, 4 September, 2015. I do not care for Dan Hannan’s quasi-libertarian ideology nor for the brand of conservatism at the Spectator, but these articles make fair points.There is a paradoxical truth here: as a Third World nation produces more people with higher wealth and more...

There are a number of late 19th and early 20th century reviews and critiques of Marx’s theories, by both Marxists and critics of Marx, which are still well worth reading as follows: Dühring, Eugen. 1867. “Marx, Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, 1. Band, Hamburg, 1867,” Ergänzungsblätter zur Kenntniß der Gegenwart, pp.182–186.Dühring, Eugen. 1871. Kritische Geschichte der Nationalökonomie und des Sozialismus. Grieben, Berlin.Dühring, Eugen. 1875. Kritische Geschichte der...

Marx’s views are expressed well in Value, Price and Profit, which was a series of lectures he delivered in 1865, even though it was first published in 1898: “These few hints will suffice to show that the very development of modern industry must progressively turn the scale in favour of the capitalist against the working man, and that consequently the general tendency of capitalistic production is not to raise, but to sink the average standard of wages, or to push the value of labor more or...

His interview by Hannity some days ago is below.[embedded content]And of course rhetoric is one thing; if he gets into office what he does may well be very different. In that respect, he is a wildcard.Note carefully: (1) Trump says he will not cut entitlements; so, incidentally, does Bernie Sanders.(2) his major line on the economy is: ditch free trade deals and offshoring of jobs and end the exporting of manufacturing to the Third World (despite laughably paying empty lip service to “free...

Because … they vote for Trump, and he, like many GOP establishment conservatives, is foaming at the mouth at the thought of Trump at the head of the GOP. At first, I thought this was a joke, say, an article from the Onion.But see here and the original article here, which is an article in the leading US conservative journal National Review by Kevin Williamson. His explicit words on America’s poor white working class: the “truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they...

One of the most laughable aspects of modern Marxism and left anarchism is their endless bloviating talk about how they allegedly speak for the working class.First of all, there is the reality that Marxist or communist parties are virtually dead in the Western world (here, here, and here). There are no doubt more working class people voting for conservatives in the West than for far left Marxists (e.g., for the UK’s recent general election see here), and that won’t change any time...

From Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty: “No man can therefore have a ‘right’ to compel someone to do a positive act, for in that case the compulsion violates the right of person or property of the individual being coerced. ….Applying our theory to parents and children, this means that a parent does not have the right to aggress against his children, but also that the parent should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail...

I pointed out in the last post why Chomsky’s views are different from those of the Postmodernist left and its modern offshoot the regressive left on many points.Now for some criticism. Here Steven Pinker makes interesting criticisms of Chomsky’s politics and his views of human nature. For Pinker, we need the leviathan state, and anarchism is an absurd utopian fantasy – and he is right. Also, badly missing here is the reality that religions cause terrible conflicts between human beings and...

I tire of people trying to paint Chomsky as the father of the regressive left.Yes, some elements of this thinking have influenced it and flowed into it (e.g., an often unbalanced and one-sided critique of US foreign policy). And, yes, you can make serious and sometimes very serious criticisms of Chomsky too.But I also tire of regressive leftists trying to invoke Chomsky as if he is one of their own. This is blatantly untrue.If you look seriously at Chomsky’s thought and beliefs, there is a...