Capitalism

Karl Marx Was Right

This is one of many Intelligence Squared debates on YouTube. There were some interesting points made – by those opposing the above motion. To stand up and declare that ‘Marx was Right’ is exactly analogous to declaring that Paul Ehrlich was right. PE is the word champion of being wrong about everything. The UK, according to him would have ceased to exist some thirty years ago. Industrialised societies should have perished from starvation. He continues to publish and to be lionised by the bedwetters.

The debaters were agreed on one thing: Marx admired Capitalism. He thought that it was but one step on the road to Communism. Communism is, to all intents and purposes, dead. Marxism, regrettably, survives.

Interestingly, Marxism defines itself with respect to Capitalism. This is a big mistake. Capitalism is not an ideology – it cannot have internal contradictions. Free market apologists did not invent Capitalism. We simply wish to see the state cease to intervene in normal, natural interactions between human beings. Marx was wrong about everything. At the time he was writing, predicting that wages would fall, wages were rising.

When leftist progressives attack what they call capitalism, they always get it wrong. They allege that bail-outs to banks are in some way capitalistic. Bankruptcy is capitalistic. RBS and Lloyds were bailed out by the f**king government. Our government took money (looted from us) to cushion gamblers who had made bad bets. Free market thinkers may have sympathised with those who made mistakes. Speaking for myself, sympathy is as far as we go. In every business (and I speak from experience), you make good decisions (which are and deserve to be rewarded) or you make bad decisions (which are and deserve to be punished). RBS and Lloyds should have been allowed to take the bankruptcy route – particularly in view of the fact that our banking system allows banks to create money out of thin air.

Let’s hear it for bankruptcy! A business fails; someone else buys the assets and (maybe) makes it work.

This is not an economic ideology. Leftists simply do not understand free markets.

The big division is between those who see the world as it is and those who have a conception of the world as they would like it to be.