Pat Boone Calls The President A Marxist

[J Wolfsberger]

I didn't intend to imply that nothing Marx ever did was accurate or useful. But I would say that before you can get anything out of, say, the Labor Theory of Value, you have to do a lot of translating into real world conditions of economic behavior.

Yes, he did do some useful research. He then did a terrible job of applying the results.

As for the rest, we're in considerable disagreement. Exploring it would take us well outside the boundaries of this site. We can agree to disagree.

[davidbfpo]

Last night there was a discussion on the BBC's Newsnight programme on the Cyprus banking raid and an economist pointed out to one discussant that the US government is a very, very active participant in the economy. Reference was made to the US$31 billion annual investment in drug / medical research, by an agency I didn't catch the name of. Needless to say in the UK and suspect other places in the EU, there is no equivalent, let alone such an amount.

Sometimes one hears Americans, inside and outside government, refer to the USA being a capitalist economy, free market etc. Really?

The sad (my) truth is that both the advocates and participants in public policy making in the developed 'West', whether capitalist or socialist and those in-between - just love spending other people's money.

Perhaps the USA should acknowledge it is not the current President who is a 'Marxist', but a rather large part of your establishment, elite, public and private sector.

[TheCurmudgeon]

Last night there was a discussion on the BBC's Newsnight programme on the Cyprus banking raid and an economist pointed out to one discussant that the US government is a very, very active participant in the economy. Reference was made to the US$31 billion annual investment in drug / medical research, by an agency I didn't catch the name of. Needless to say in the UK and suspect other places in the EU, there is no equivalent, let alone such an amount.

Sometimes one hears Americans, inside and outside government, refer to the USA being a capitalist economy, free market etc. Really?

The sad (my) truth is that both the advocates and participants in public policy making in the developed 'West', whether capitalist or socialist and those in-between - just love spending other people's money.

Perhaps the USA should acknowledge it is not the current President who is a 'Marxist', but a rather large part of your establishment, elite, public and private sector.

We practice Corporate Marxism

J. W. - I can agree that we can agree to disagree

[Firn]

Marx did a brilliant job at looking and exposing some very nasty business practices of his day.

He very aptly described the vast economic development, the booming globalisation and the shifts of economic and political power:

The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.

The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolised by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; division of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour in each single workshop.

Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacturer no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry; the place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.

Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.

He sadly draw idiotic conclusions, was stupidly deterministic and pretty much deadly wrong on the macro side of economics. Of course he had not the advantage of our knowledge, and we have seen many getting it terrible wrong today despite that wealth of wisdom. Everybody who has studied the results of too much purity of cultic groupthink wielding the power of the state should be very aware. Maos great leap is just a horrific example of it.

Moderates were able to blunt the impact of naked capitalism, laying the foundations of sustained strong economic growth which rests on shoulders of many share- and stakeholders and did overall greatly lessen the chances of radicals left and right. Obama is arguably not moderate enough on some issues like government spending and financial reforms, doing too little but of course while facing strong headwinds.

[J Wolfsberger]

The sad (my) truth is that both the advocates and participants in public policy making in the developed 'West', whether capitalist or socialist and those in-between - just love spending other people's money.

Perhaps the USA should acknowledge it is not the current President who is a 'Marxist', but a rather large part of your establishment, elite, public and private sector.

I agree whole heartedly with both, and get quite depressed about the second. (Incidentally, your latter point is what I was pointing out when I wrote that "crony capitalism" is an oxymoron.

[slapout9]

Link to a free PDF copy of the book. It is an easy read and a pretty well written book so read and decide for yourself if President Obama is an Alinsky-ite. Especially read the chapter with the rules for "Means and Ends" not usually quoted when the book is discussed. I thought those rules were more insightful than the actual rules for the radicals. Enjoy


http://servv89pn0aj.sn.sourcedns.com...r_Radicals.pdf

[jmm99]

Slap,

Thank you for finding an online version. I've been a fan of Rules since it came out in the early 1970s (and its predecessor, Reveille, since undergrad days in the 1960s).

Alinksy starts his chapter "Of Means and Ends" with this quote:

We cannot think first and act afterwards. From the moment of birth we are immersed in action and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought. -- Alfred North Whitehead

rather than one from a leftist oracle such as Bertrand Russell. Whitehead was Russell's mentor and co-author of the first edition of Principia Mathematica. They went separate ways when Whitehead (whose son, an RFC flyer, was killed in WWI) became a theist and non-pacifist.

I like (better than Alinsky's choice) this nugget from Whitehead's Adventures of Ideas (1933):

Now the intercourse between individuals and between social groups takes one of two forms, force or persuasion. Commerce is the great example of intercourse by way of persuasion. War, slavery, and governmental compulsion exemplify the reign of force.

I've always preferred persuasion, but recognize the value of force in exigent situations.

I've collected the "means and ends" rules into one quote. Alinsky explains them in detail (left those out). I could add to them, but won't.

My suggestion is to consider them in various contexts of Haves and Have Nots. For example, in present politics, the Dems are the Haves; the Reps are the Have Nots. Are these rules useful to the Rep Have Nots in the current cycle ?

I present here a series of rules pertaining to the ethics of means and ends:

[F]irst, that one's concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one's personal interest in the issue. ... Accompanying this rule is the parallel one that one's concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one's distance from the scene of conflict.
...
The second rule of the ethics of means and ends is that the judgment of the ethics of means is dependent upon the political position of those sitting in judgment.
...
The third rule of the ethics of means and ends is that in war the end justifies almost any means.
...
The fourth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that judgment must be made in the context of the times in which the action occurred and not from any other chronological vantage point.
...
The fifth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that concern with ethics increases with the number of means available and vice versa.
...
The sixth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that the less important the end to be desired, the more one can afford to engage in ethical evaluations of means.

The seventh rule of the ethics of means and ends is that generally success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics. ... There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds he becomes a founding father.

The eighth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that the morality of a means depends upon whether the means is being employed at a time of imminent defeat or imminent victory.
...
The ninth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical.
...
The tenth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments. ... All effective actions require the passport of morality.
...
The eleventh rule of the ethics of means and ends is that goals must be phrased in general terms like "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," "Of the Common Welfare," "Pursuit of Happiness" or "Bread and Peace."
...
Means and ends are so qualitatively interrelated that the true question has never been the proverbial one, "Does the End justify the Means?" but always has been "Does this particular end justify this particular means?"

Those or similar rules (as interpreted and applied by me, not necessarily as Alinsky says) guided me in political action (long since a thing of the past) and legal action (a more recent thing of the past). In brief, both political practice and legal practice require hardball.

So, in that sense, I'd have to plead guilty to being an "Alinskyite".

Regards

Mike