The revolution of capitalism

StevieJ

An interesting article about Marx's 19th Century theories and whether they are bearing fruit or not, do you feel like a Prole?
There are some great comments from pathetic Anti Beeb DM readers

Karl Marx may have been wrong about communism but he was right about much of capitalism, John Gray writes.
As a side-effect of the financial crisis, more and more people are starting to think Karl Marx was right. The great 19th Century German philosopher, economist and revolutionary believed that capitalism was radically unstable.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14764357

Rotor

Well I read the first 20 or so posts and they seemed mostly from Morning Star readers , perhaps with a few of the more articulate ones from the Guardian.
Oh No ; i've fallen into your trap of lazily grouping an entire papers readership as having the same homogenous opinion and intellectual capability.

Dave101t

nothing wrong with capitalism, so long as it marries communism and has a half cast child we can all love.....
if you know what i mean.

vivatifosi

An interesting piece, thanks Stevie.

IMO Communism doesn't work as a system due to human self-interest, however Marxism does offer some useful critiques of capitalism. It's right that capitalism comes under regular investigation. How can you question things that are going wrong otherwise? I've said before, I find Mandel's "Late Capitalism" (written in the 1970s) a more compelling questioning of the system we have now, largely because the capitalist system we have now was more complete than it was in Marx's day. One of the questions I've been pondering on since reading it is this: if capitalism is built on expansion, what happens when you've run out of new markets to exploit? Further it is right that everyone who is interested, irrespective of perspective, questions the system and how different parts of it work.

macaque_2

StevieJ wrote: »

An interesting article about Marx's 19th Century theories and whether they are bearing fruit or not, do you feel like a Prole?
There are some great comments from pathetic Anti Beeb DM readers
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14764357

I am a strong supporter of free market capitalism. Its a pity we don't have it.

In a free market, a bank would go bust for miss-selling, overcharging customers, excessive spreads etc. As we have seen, they never go bust no matter how badly or dishonestly they behave. The reason is they have huge political and commercial influence which they use to sujugate the free market. Banks are not the only guilty parties. For example:

• Freddy Laker versus BA
• Supermarkets blocking planning permission for competitors
• News International
• Big Pharma companies obstructing competion
• Big software companies blocking competitors products
• Building companies creating pricing cartels
• Etc.

Free market capitalism is great - when do we start?

StevieJ

Rotor wrote: »

Well I read the first 20 or so posts and they seemed mostly from Morning Star readers , perhaps with a few of the more articulate ones from the Guardian.
Oh No ; i've fallen into your trap of lazily grouping an entire papers readership as having the same homogenous opinion and intellectual capability.

Easily done

Road_Hog

We used to have capitalism, it was good. It started to noticeably die sometime in the late '90s. If you were prepared to work hard, you could better yourself and make a decent living out of life. You could own a reasonable home, have a reliable car, afford nice holidays etc.

Then capitalism got greedy and surprisingly was aided by the Marxists. We now have corporatism, where the trans national corporations seek to stop the trickle down effect of capitalism and keep every last penny for themselves. Baby Boomers like post war capitalism, they did well out of it, retired early on nice full pensions. Post Baby Boomers are getting shafted by corporatism, are seeing wage deflation by mass immigration, pensions disappearing, the public sector pension age rising, housing affordability problems and the job market fragmenting into low paid service sector and part time jobs.

I'm glad I was born right at the end of the Baby Boomer period, it's not looking good for those entering the job market, looking to get on the housing ladder or think about what sort of pension/retirement that they will have.

A._Badger

Wow! A BBC article in praise of Marxism!

How did they introduce it? Was it: "And in no change at all from our usual programming...."

pqrdef

macaque wrote: »

Free market capitalism is great - when do we start?

If you find out, let me know. I'll take all my money out of banks and things and buy gold and hide it under a floorboard. And so will lots of other people.

Your free market capitalism would be too risky even if everybody in it was honest. Which of course they won't be.

IronWolf

Don't agree with a lot of what that reporter is saying, and he's showing quite a simplistic view of the market system and clearly doesn't really understand the fundamentals beneath it.

I think the words right and Marx can't be said in the same sentence with credibility, communism has been proven to be one gigantic failure and he was completely wrong. At least capitalism works with the right government controls in place.