Tag Archives: Karl Marx

Say’s law and macroeconomic ignorance, by Alasdair Macleod

Posted on January 20, 2023 | Leave a comment

Marx and Keynes both ignored French economist Jean-Baptiste Say, and their economic theories are both fatally flawed because of it. From Alasdair Macleod at goldmoney.com:

Probably the greatest error in modern economics was the abandonment of Say’s law, otherwise known as the law of the markets. In a nutshell, it demonstrated that through the division of labour, production is firmly linked to consumption, and the former is tied to the latter through the medium of money and credit.

While there are variations in production outputs of individual goods, in free markets there can never be a general glut. It was this that Keynes had to disprove in order to create a role for the state, intervening to make up for the supposed deficiencies of free markets. While reasoned analysis shows that Keynes failed to disprove Say’s law, he managed to convince the mainstream establishment that he had actually succeeded.

This article traces the history of Say’s law, from Jean-Baptiste Say’s original work on the subject to the present day. It shows how Keynes bent the truth about free markets, that an understanding of Say’s law explains why state intervention fails, and why prices will continue to rise in the imminent economic recession.

Introduction

Back in the 1930s, forward looking economists trying to justify an economic role for the state had a hurdle in classical economics to mount: the self-evident truth in what was described as Say’s law. Otherwise known as the law of the markets, Say’s law pointed out that we turn up at the factory or office to do a day’s work, so that we can afford all the things other people produce that make life tolerable, and even pleasurable.

It refers to the writings of Jean-Baptist Say, a French economist who in his A Treatise of Political Economy, originally published in 1803, described the relationship between production, consumption, and the role of the division of labour in how humans organise themselves economically-speaking. It was a remarkable achievement, defining the science of economics and the roles of money and credit in great detail, when the science was yet young.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Economics, Government, Money, Politics

Tagged , ,

Why the Marxist Left Loves Lincoln, by Thomas DiLorenzo

Posted on July 13, 2020 | Leave a comment

It’s not just that Marxists would approve of many of Lincoln’s policies, but Lincoln had an actual affinity for the work of Karl Marx. From Thomas DiLorenzo at lewrockwell.com:

“No leader of a powerful nation” should allow such a thing as “the dismemberment of the Soviet Union.”

–Marxist “Civil War” historian Eric Foner, The Nation, Feb. 11, 1991

A July 27, 2019 article in the Washington Post by Gillian Brockell was headlined, “You Know Who Was into Karl Marx?  No, not AOC.  Abraham Lincoln.”  Following up on the New York Times’ 2017 weeks-long celebration of the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the Post was doing its part to celebrate and promote Marxian socialism by crowing that “the first Republican president . . . was surrounded by socialists and looked to them for counsel.”  The message being conveyed by the Post was that this is what all American presidents should do.  They should listen to and obey the Washington Post, in other words.

Much of Lincoln’s socialilstic “counsel” came from Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune, described by the Post as “the newspaper largely responsible for transmitting the ideals and ideas that formed the Republican Party in 1854,” many of which were “overtly socialist.”

It is little wonder that the ideas promulgated by the New York Tribune, the mouthpiece of the Republican Party, were overtly socialist:  Karl Marx himself was a twice-weekly columnist for the paper from 1852 to 1862, contributing over 500 articles.  An April 1957 article in American Heritage magazine entitled “When Marx Worked for Horace Greeley” spoke of how “the organ of . . . the new Republican party, sustained Karl Marx over the years when he was mapping out his crowning tract of overthrow, Das Kapital . . . The Tribune was not only Marx’s meal ticket but his experimental outlet for agitation and ideas during the most creative period of his life.”  Without this financial support, “there might possibly – who knows?—have been no Das Kapital” and maybe even no “Lenin and a Stalin as the master’s disciples . . .”   Much of what was written in The New York Tribune by Karl Marx “went bodily into Das Kapital.”

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Cronyism, Government, History, Philosophy, Politics

Tagged , ,

Resolving creeping communism, by Alasdair Macleod

Posted on November 16, 2019 | 1 comment

Alasdair Macleod explains why socialism can’t work, particularly the socialization of money. From Macleod at goldmoney.com:

The thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Iron Curtain coincides with a popular resurgence of communism and a drift into more socialism. A collective amnesia sees a return of the Soviet Union’s failed policies in a Marxist Labour party in Britain. Increasing socialism is expressed by US Democrats contending for the primaries.

This article explains the basic economic fallacies common to both. It clarifies why state ownership of the means of production does not resolve the problem of economic calculation in a socialist economy. It also explains the errors in socialistic condemnation of free markets.

And finally, it points out that very few of us realise we are more socialist than we think when we endorse government control of possibly our most important common commodity, which is our everyday money. But there is a simple solution: stop accommodating crony capitalists.

Introduction

This week saw the thirtieth anniversary of the breeching of the Berlin Wall. The elapse of time means most people younger than their mid-forties fail to understand what it was all about. Indeed, many folk older than that will have forgotten that the reason the Berlin Wall fell was because the communist states in eastern Europe and the old Soviet Union were no longer able to suppress their people. And the people were suppressed because suppression of personal freedom is central to communism, the creed that says people must make sacrifices for the common good. Besides the passage of time, the uncomfortable part which makes people want to forget its horrors is that communism is the both the basis and the final destination of modern socialism.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Posted in Capitalism, Government, Money, Philosophy, Politics

Tagged , , ,

The Worst Man In Modern History, by Alasdair Macleod

Posted on May 12, 2018 | 1 comment

There has never been a philosophy whose adherents have produced as much destruction and death as that of Karl Marx. From Alasdair Macleod at goldmoney.com:

It seems extraordinary that in defiance of all factual history and philosophical knowledge anyone should celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of Karl Marx. More than anyone, through wrong-headed ideas, he bears responsibility, indirectly admittedly, for the deaths of an estimated one hundred million people in the last century, and the severe suppression though economic and social servitude of fully one third of the world’s population. And if you also include those who have suffered under the yoke of Marxist-inspired modern socialism, the philosophy that says the state is more important than the individual, you could argue nearly the whole world is influenced by Marxian philosophy today.

That might seem an extreme statement, but you only have to ask almost anyone anywhere, which do they consider is more important, the individual or the state, to see if this supposition is correct. The only explanation for the continued adoration of the man is that with such universal influence, there are bound to be legions of supporters remaining, ignorant of and blind to the reality. However, during his lifetime – he died in 1883 – he was hardly known. It wasn’t until the Russian revolution thirty-four years later that Marx began to be taken seriously.

How did Marx achieve this powerful posthumous position? It was not through his economics, though they are often quoted and form the core principles of his Communist Manifesto, but through his philosophy, old ideas from forgotten men such as Hegel (1770-1831), which he rehashed into a socialist philosophy that is still accepted by many today, despite the accumulated evidence against it. The difference with Hegel is Hegel strove to establish that historical evolution would lead to increasing individual freedom, while Marx strove to prove the individual played no role in historical evolution.

Hegel argued that all reality is capable of being expressed in rational categories and can be reduced to a synthetic unity by dialectic reasoning within a system of absolute idealism.[i] In plain English, he concluded we all take our cue from our social and cultural surroundings and circumstances, and that they in turn are set by historical events. This became the basis for Marx’s extreme philosophy of class structure, which, in common with Hegel, denied any role to the independence of human thought.

To continue reading: The Worst Man In Modern History,

1 Comment

Posted in Governments, History, Morality, Philosophy, Politics

Tagged ,

Top 10 Goals in the Communist Manifesto, Accomplished in America, by Joe Jarvis

Posted on May 6, 2018 | Leave a comment

Not all Communist takeovers are dramatic and quick. Some are long, drawn-out affairs. From Joe Jarvis at dailybell.com:

Plenty of stupid ideas kill people. But one man’s stupid ideas have killed over a hundred million people.

Karl Marx was born 200 years ago today. And despite the utter failure of his communist philosophy in practice, the cult lives on. Still people want to try again… this time they will get it right.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels originally published The Communist Manifesto in 1848. It laid out the beliefs and action plan of the Communist Party. The goal was to get communists of every nationality to rise up and unite to overthrow their “capitalist oppressors.”

Little did they know their words would be used by the likes of Stalin and Mao as justification for over 100 million murders meant to supposedly move society forward.

In America, the goals of the communists have crept their way into society with little fanfare. Many people have no idea that public schools, the graduated income tax, and even a central state-controlled bank (like the Federal Reserve) were tenets of the Communist Manifesto.

The points are boiled down in one section of the manifesto to a list of ten main goals. These are the goals, in Marx and Engels’ own words, followed by an analysis of how deeply they have seeped into the United States governing structure.

“1. Abolition of all public land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.”

Also known as property taxes. Can you really say you own land if you must pay the government every year in order to keep it? Fail to pay your rent, and they will eventually confiscate “your” land. This money is then used for “public purposes” like public schools(just wait for #10) and police, who will remove you from the government’s land if you fail to pay your rent.

And if the local government can fine you for keeping a front yard garden, or backyard chickens, do you really own the land anyway? Sounds like the proletariat traded capitalist oppressors for government oppressors.

The federal government owns outright 28% of all land in the United States, 640 million acres. This includes the Bureau of Land Management’s 248 million acre turf used to control or oppress political dissidents like Cliven Bundy. “The BLM is also responsible for subsurface mineral resources in areas totaling 700 million acres.” That means they control almost three times as much land as they own.

 

To continue reading: Top 10 Goals in the Communist Manifesto, Accomplished in America

Leave a comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Economy, Education, Financial markets, Government, History, Philosophy, Taxes, Trade

Tagged , ,

He Said That? 6/30/17

Posted on June 30, 2017 | Leave a comment

From Karl Marx (1818-1883), German political philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialistm, “The Victory of the Counter-Revolution in Vienna,” Neue Rheinische Zeitung’, 07 November 1848:

T]he very cannibalism of the counterrevolution will convince the nations that there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror.

Leave a comment

Posted in Insurrection, Uncategorized

Tagged

He Said That? 2/19/17

Posted on February 19, 2017 | Leave a comment

Hat tip to The Burning Platform for today’s quote, from Henry Hazlitt (1894-1993), American financial journalist, author, and editor:

The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are. Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others. Never under any circumstances admit that your own failure may be owing to your own weakness, or that the failure of anyone else may be due to his own defects – his laziness, incompetence, improvidence, or stupidity.

Leave a comment

Posted in Economics, Philosophy

Tagged ,