Originally Posted by
Odysseus
I don't see where calling Marx's classless society a "utopian fantasy" "in which people who spent their lives in squalor while resenting the successes of others, i.e., people like him, would be on top" constitutes an endorsement, but I also don't see how someone could look at Marx's theories and miss the glaring contradictions. As for you comparison with the founders, you could not be more wrong. First, the political philosophy of the American founding was based in historical precedent in addition to theory, rather than theory alone. The separation and definition of powers was derived from Roman republican law, the limits on federal power versus state and local powers were derived from the Greek polises and the definitions of individual rights came from English common law, all of which were modified to suit the specific circumstances of the founding. Second, the founders did not specify an endstate. They weren't utopians who saw an end to human progress, but a constant tug of war between interests, in which a just government would act as referee. Their model was meant to provide stable government so that people could pursue their own interests, rather than a state that would define their interests and channel them accordingly. Finally, because the founders didn't have an endstate in mind for society, they left it open-ended. The Constitution can be amended as times change and laws need to be adjusted to reflect those changes, but the fundamental principles of limited government that is responsible to the people, rather than expansive government that takes responsibility for the people (and thus takes responsibility away from them) remains valid. Marx, OTOH, visualized a specific endstate which had never existed before, and because of this, his plans for achieving it were, at best, vague, and at worst, catastrophic. Millions upon millions of lives have been wasted in attempting to implement this absurd fantasy, and Marxist dictatorships of the proletariat (Marx's term, not Lenin's) have no amendment process beyond the whim of the thug-in-chief to change failing policies. Thus, they fail, fail and fail again, and every time, a new generation comes along and says, "what if we only kill the kulaks if they actually rebel?" or "What if we have ten-year plans instead of five-year plans?" But ultimately, they are simply rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, and the iceberg, the laws of economics, loom ahead.
On the contrary. Both my daughter and Marx created fantasy endstates. The difference is that my daughter is six years old and can be expected to believe that she can someday marry a prince, or that Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny or Dialectical Materialism or some other improbable entity or philosophy will fullfill all of her wants until she grows out of it. What's your excuse?
There are many differences between the two. First, in a free market, the failure of thieves is more obvious, and more limited. True, you get an Enron of a Bernie Madoff periodically, but they do fail, and when they do, the bad guys usually end up in jail, or at least out of business and discredited. Compare that with the USSR (which, BTW, you said we shouldn't reference, because we're only talking theory, or at least we shouldn't talk about it unless the discussion point favors your argument, but since you brought it up...), in which state-run agencies failed for decades without consequence, except to those who depended on them for goods and services. A Bernie Madoff who cooked the books in the USSR would have been kept in power as long as he continued to keep the party elite in the money. A Soviet Diamond mine might not be making a profit, but they could always find one big stone to cut, polish and mount in a gold setting so that Mrs. Brezhnev got a lovely gift when Leonid came back from his inspection tour. And, since the government maintains a monopoly (remember, the workers, through the dictatorship of the proletariat, own all of the means of production), failure in one company equals failure in an entire industry. Even during the worst period of the dustbowl, American food production never reached the point of collapse, while during perfectly normal times, the Soviets couldn't feed themselves, even though they had some of the most fertile arable land in the world.
Second, you cite the worst excesses of capitalism as if they are the norm, and cite the norms of communism as if they are comparable. It's a lovely bait and switch, but the fact is that for every Enron, there's an Exxon; For every Bernie Madoff, there's a Warrne Buffett; For every Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, there's a Chase, a Bank of America or a host of other lenders that are solvent. Even when Chrysler and GM were taking government handouts and submitting to Obamaism, Ford bit the bullet and restructured and is now in better shape, and Toyota, Honda, Porsce-Audi and other car-makers are still making good, dependable cars that people want to buy, and they are making money and returns on investments. Meanwhile, when Gazprom was the only state-controlled energy company, the Soviets couldn't even produce enough lightbulbs to light their own homes, there was no private investment (and no incentive to divest of unproductive investments or back productive ones) and the various auto manufacturers in the eastern bloc managed to produce only one car that met western standards (if barely), and that was the Yugo.
Finally, you claim that investment is a poker game between plutocrats. It's not. Unless the investment is a complete sham (as it was with Enron and Madoff), investment creates assets. Those assets don't disappear, even during the most hostile takeovers, they are either sold off or reapportioned under new management. If you hold stock in company A, and company B takes over, your stock doesn't disappear, it becomes part of the stock of company B. Thus, if you bought stock in, say, National Periodical Publications in 1960 (otherwise known as DC Comics), and kept the stock, today you own stock in AOL-Time-Warner.
I'd call this game, set and match, but I'd really like to see Wei stick his nose in.
