tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5953818443099553136.post2939500484107364939..comments2023-05-28T08:33:51.529-07:00Comments on Suvy's Thoughts: On the Absurdity of Leftist (Marx-based) Thought and Dangers of Taking Marx, Engels, Guevara, Lenin, etc. SeriouslySuvy Boyinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14498944095362886178noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5953818443099553136.post-19994542675238144612015-09-17T04:59:51.245-07:002015-09-17T04:59:51.245-07:00I don't think you fully understand my critique...I don't think you fully understand my critique on Marx. My critique on Marx is that he doesn't question his assumptions. He's attacking ideas like comparative advantage by Ricardo, but Alexander Hamilton wrote an extensive critique of comparative advantage in 1790. Comparative advantage forces developing countries to specialize in commodity production and commodity exports, which prevents capital formation. So protection is necessary. We don't need Marx to critique this. Hell, Marx attacking Ricardo in this regard is akin to beating a dead horse. Marx didn't come up with any new ideas. He's just an idiot who thought he was smart and new and innovative. Of course, he was only the latter two, but his ideas were incredibly stupid. This guy envisioned a utopian society with a classless state as even possible and a sign of "progress". He attacked other societies with very sophisticated institutions as primitive because he didn't understand them (ex. the Asiatic Mode of Production, which is also historically wrong BTW). The guy just assumes that because he doesn't understand it, it shouldn't exist. In other words, if you take him seriously, it'll blow up your society.<br /><br />BTW, in most of the world, industrialization has caused far more harm than good. It's happened and there's nothing we can do about it, but centrally planned industrialization hasn't been good. I don't know why you simply assume it has. The kind of environmental degradation it's created, especially in places like India or China or the old USSR has been so damaging and most of it hasn't even been productive. In fact, most of that industrialization has led to disastrous consequences.<br /><br />Some of these countries took explicit policies to turbocharge GDP growth via central planning and industrialization, including the USSR, India, other countries, and even Nazi Germany (Nazi Germany generated massive GDP growth by rearmament, but it was basically the same process). Most of these consequences haven't been good. Have you been to these places that've been industrialized via central planning? In many of these places in the 3rd world, all you've done is allow larger populations to be sustained, fertility and population growth rates to explode, and many of these cases (ex. most places in India, Nigeria, etc.) have led to more people with no commensurate increase in the standard of living.<br /><br />In the case of India, living standards only saw a real increase AFTER liberalization reforms in 1991, which was forced on the government from a crisis. I don't know why you assume forcible industrialization policies to be good everywhere, especially if they're done by central planning. Some places, like far inland India, have no business having large scale industry. It actually hurts economic production in the longer term.<br /><br />Don't get me wrong, some parts of India are doing great now, but to say that's because of centrally planned industrialization is a complete and utter joke. It's in spite of centrally planned methods. I can't emphasize how much central planning fucked up India. I can spend hours on this.Suvy Boyinahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14498944095362886178noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5953818443099553136.post-36456796702830590292015-09-17T04:43:30.587-07:002015-09-17T04:43:30.587-07:00"the nature of money in a capitalst economy o..."the nature of money in a capitalst economy of production"<br />The nature and creation of money is straightforward. It's just a balance sheet creation: loans create deposits (from the invention of double entry bookkeeping by Florence ~1500).<br /><br />"- the distinction between value, exchange value, and use value "<br /><br />These distinctions are total crap. There's no way to measure value, so anything that uses value as a distinction needs to be thrown out the window. Why would you use something as a measurement that can't be measured? You don't. If you do use something like that, I just assume you're an idiot.<br /><br />The problem with your reasoning is the same as that of Marx. You're not questioning you're assumptions. The classic example is when you talk of "value" like "exchange value" or "use value" without even having the ability to measure value. The problem in economics is the use of such abstractions like "utility" or "value", which are useless and cannot be measured.<br /><br />"the scheme of basic reproduction of capital, and the expanded one (so much for the assumed linearity and non circularity of Marx thought you mentioned in our discussions earlier...)"<br /><br />So what is capital? I actually wrote an entire post on capital formation, but it's a mistake to assume capital is money in a bank. Capital, as I define it, is any input in production that's not land or labor. In other words, the definition of capital itself is very broad and encompasses a whole host of things. The ability to extract and refine oil instead of wood is a form of capital. Institutions to protect property rights are a form of capital. Flexible social, political, and financial institutions are a form of capital.<br />http://suvysthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/12/economy-basics-and-real-wealth-creation.htmlSuvy Boyinahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14498944095362886178noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5953818443099553136.post-54995306054755285782015-09-17T04:38:33.298-07:002015-09-17T04:38:33.298-07:00"The State only stepped in and accelerated th..."The State only stepped in and accelerated the catch-up processus, no wonder why that version of "marxism" was popular in poorly industrialized countries"<br /><br />Yea, this is total nonsense. I was born in one of those countries (India) and I can personally tell you how much damage central planning did to India. In 1945, the entire population of the entire Indian subcontinent was ~300 million. By 1990 (India pre-liberalization), the population of India was >1 billion. The problem with centrally planned industrialization is that you increase food production instantaneously while not having the market linking mechanisms to make trade more available. What you ended up doing is creating an explosion in the fertility rate that could be sustained while preventing market networks from developing more naturally in a decentralized manner. Go and take a look at the water reserve levels from India in 1950 to today and then get back to me. Before, you'd have to dig 4-8 feet for water and now, you have to dig 50 feet (not a joke BTW). Secondly, you took a very diverse country and imposed a one size fits all policy. India was a NET CREDITOR when it got independence. It was an opportunity to open India up to foreign capital, develop infrastructure, and basic market mechanisms. None of that happened and when populations started to explode and the government even came close to realizing what was going on, it was already too late.<br /><br />You're using the USSR as an example of something good?! The USSR committed the worst environmental degradation in world history.<br /><br />"This is true that there were two strands within the NSDAP, but saying he got inspiration from Marx, or even that when ruling the "socialist" part was something else than political posture is a classical conservative way of dismissing Marx and socialism, without grasping even a little bit of understanding of it."<br /><br />Hitler was inspired by Marx and says so in the first chapter of Mein Kampf. Hitler wasn't against Marx; he was against Lenin's interpretation of Marx. See the link below, here's an excerpt from the link below.<br />"He further elaborated by claiming that out of ten thousand politicians only one Bismarck emerged, subtly implying that he too had been born with this gift; continuing, he declared that it was not Karl Marx who stirred the masses and ignited the Russian Revolution but Lenin, not making his appeal to the mind but to the senses."<br />https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_views_of_Adolf_Hitler<br /><br />"Think to Roosevelt and his New Deal, Mainstream Keynesianism in West Europe, and also the catch-up industrialization and the accelerated consequent processus of capital accumulation in the so-called socialist countries."<br /><br />Yea, these progressivist stories are all nonsense. The person most responsible for the interwar period and World War II was the racist, social Darwinist dumbass Woodrow Wilson. Actually, the Republicans and Wall Street wanted a cancellation of interwar debts accumulated in World War I, but the Democrats (who were supported by the people) were against it because the Republicans were rich. There were Republicans who were LITERALLY citing Keynes' The Economic Consequences of the Peace in Congress AD VERBATIM, but they were ignored by the people at large who supported the Democrats.<br /><br />The person who led the US to the greatness it had in the 20th century was John Pierpont Morgan in the late 19th BTW, not FDR as is claimed by the progressivist narrative.<br /><br />Who cares about what Ricardo says? He's a dumb economist like anyone else. In Ricardo's comparative advantage, he assumes prices to be stable and assumes away financial factors, so how are any of Ricardo's ideas applicable to developing countries? It wasn't Marx that was even close to the first to make this argument. Alexander Hamilton made this argument well BEFORE MARX WAS BORN!Suvy Boyinahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14498944095362886178noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5953818443099553136.post-27767992825003323542015-09-17T01:25:09.247-07:002015-09-17T01:25:09.247-07:00What happened to our interesting discussion on INE...What happened to our interesting discussion on INET YSI Commons? <br /><br />Well anyway, I had read your post on what you called leftist thoughts a long time ago. And it is basically insults or historical errors:<br /><br />- Hitler being a socialist: with the german bourgeoisie at his back? This is true that there were two strands within the NSDAP, but saying he got inspiration from Marx, or even that when ruling the "socialist" part was something else than political posture is a classical conservative way of dismissing Marx and socialism, without grasping even a little bit of understanding of it. Capitalism was not destroyed by the nazis, the capital accumulation continued to go on, only a certain form of capitalism was replaced by another. Laissez-faire capitalism left the room to State-regulated capitalism. But it was the case in most of the world's countries at the time. Think to Roosevelt and his New Deal, Mainstream Keynesianism in West Europe, and also the catch-up industrialization and the accelerated consequent processus of capital accumulation in the so-called socialist countries. The economists of the Régulation would say that it was the transition to a regime of accumulation to a new one, the Fordist regime. Capital was not destroyed in socialist countries. The State only stepped in and accelerated the catch-up processus, no wonder why that version of "marxism" was popular in poorly industrialized countries (China, Russia, East Europe, Vietnam, Cambodge, Mozambique, Latine America, Indonesia...)<br />And really, man, I could look for some references for you on that topic, but to me it seemed before reading you that it was common knowledge, just like the fact that earth was not created two hundreds years ago.<br /><br />Well the rest will come after that, I have some classes. <br /><br />But I would do only one little concluding remark: you supposedly want to expose the absurdity of leftist thought. But where is the thought, where are the concept, where are the rationals etc? I would really like you to make an attempt of recalling the basic concepts developed by Marx, and those developped by his followers, and then try to oppose them on a theoretical ground. Because, man, come on, your argumentation goes like that: Marx is a materialist, racist pig, a complete bigot, and by the way also antisemite (even if he was from jewish descent...), and his followers are brutal individuals, without justice, and even Hitler was a socialist. Period. <br /><br />Anyone could understand that it is a bit short. So, for instance, I would really like you to recall us what is :<br />- the double nature of the marchandise<br />- the distinction between value, exchange value, and use value <br />- the root of the labour theory of value, and the innovations with respect to Smith's and Ricardo's versions<br />- the distinction between wealth and value, and the consequent contradiction of capitalism<br />- the scheme of basic reproduction of capital, and the expanded one (so much for the assumed linearity and non circularity of Marx thought you mentioned in our discussions earlier...)<br />- the nature of money in a capitalst economy of production<br />- the distinction between historical time and logical time, that Keynes had two<br />- his criticism of Say's law, and of generally speaking free-markets' naivity<br />This would already be a start. Because even if you claim having read extensively Marx and the Marxists, as I would not accuse you to be a lier, the only logical explanation is that you never understood themhhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03265788711338751847noreply@blogger.com