Re: [Pen-l] As capitalism stares into the abyss, was Marx right all along? ( Yes)

[Jim Devine <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx>]

Jeffrey Fisher writes:
> i never did think king was much of a writer,

I don't think he's the same one that writes horror stories. ;-)

King writes:
>Were he alive now, [Marx] would surely claim his theories were being vindicated. <

I think Randy Newman had it right: "If Marx were living today, he'd be
rolling around in his grave."

King writes:
> I’m not suggesting we’re entering revolutionary times. However, it seems increasingly likely that the economic landscape in the years ahead will be fundamentally different from the landscape that has dominated the working lives of people like me who entered the workforce in the 1980s. We’ve lived through decades of plenty, where incomes have risen rapidly, where credit has been all too easily available and where recessions have been mostly modest affairs. Suddenly, we’re facing a collapse in activity on a truly Marxist scale.<

It's not working class incomes that have risen rapidly; workers
haven't enjoyed "decades of plenty." A key reason for the current mess
is the stagnant state of wages and the resulting underconsumption
undertow.

King:
>The cost of avoiding depression is a heightened level of state intervention on a scale unimaginable for those who believe in the virtues of free markets. While such intervention may help prevent the worst ravages of economic collapse, it will ultimately do little to foster the entrepreneurial spirit and risk-taking behaviour which have, in the past, contributed so much to rising living standards.<

Of course, Calvin Coolidge Capitalism's unleashing of that
"entrepreneurial spirit and risk-taking behaviour" is an important
reason why workers haven't shared in the "rising living standards" in
recent decades (unless they borrowed a lot of money). It also
contributed to the "financial innovation" that got Wall Street into
such big trouble.[*] By the way, if you look at that famous capitalist
measure of capitalist success (real GDP per person), most countries
have grown more slowly during the CCC era (1979 and after) than during
the post-WW2 period before that.

[*] This morning on Marketplace radio, some dim-bulb was quoted as
saying that the people who work in finance were in it for the money so
that if we don't give them royal bonuses there would be less financial
innovation. That's a good reason not to give them bonuses.
-- 
Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own
way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
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