Keynes on Communism How can I accept the Communist doctrine, which sets up as its bible, above and beyond criticism, an obsolete textbook which I know not only to be scientifically erroneous but without interest or application to the modern world? How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia, who with all their faults, are the quality of life and surely carry the seeds of all human achievement? Even if we need a religion, how can we find it in the turbid rubbish of the red bookshop? It is hard for an educated, decent, intelligent son of Western Europe to find his ideals here, unless he has first suffered some strange and horrid process of conversion which has changed all his values.
"As in a kaleidoscope, the constellation of forces operating in the system as a whole is ever changing." - Ludwig Lachmann
"When A Man Dies A World Goes Out of Existence" - GLS Shackle
"WHILE THE STATE EXISTS, THERE CAN BE NO FREEDOM. WHEN THERE IS FREEDOM THERE WILL BE NO STATE." - Vladimir LENin
Great quote I just read. I think it has some amazing parallels to the message we are preaching.
“In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete.”
― Richard Buckminster Fuller
"If men are not angels, then who shall run the state?"
"What economics does for you is teach you to think, it's subject matter is of very little importance"
-Anthony de Jassay
"What economics does for you is teach you to think
How times have changed.
My humble blog
It's easy to refute an argument if you first misrepresent it. William Keizer
Quote of the day:
"The very absurdity of the economic and political theories of Marxism gives the doctrine its peculiar significance. Because of its pseudo-logic, intelligent people refuse to support it, while all those who are less accustomed to use their intellectual faculties, or who have only a rudimentary notion of economic principles, join the Marxist cause with flying banners. The intelligence behind the movement--for even this movement needs intelligence if it is to subsist--is supplied by the Jews themselves, naturally of course as a gratuitous service which is at the same time a sacrifice on their part."
- Anonymous
Nice try, Hitler.
How can I accept the Communist doctrine, which sets up as its bible, above and beyond criticism, an obsolete textbook which I know not only to be scientifically erroneous but without interest or application to the modern world? How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia, who with all their faults, are the quality of life and surely carry the seeds of all human achievement? Even if we need a religion, how can we find it in the turbid rubbish of the red bookshop? It is hard for an educated, decent, intelligent son of Western Europe to find his ideals here, unless he has first suffered some strange and horrid process of conversion which has changed all his values.
Elections are a futures market for stolen property
A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.
From the saintly and single-minded idealist, to the fanatic is often but a step.
The finest opportunity ever given to the world was thrown away because the passion for equality made vain the hope for freedom.
Who will deny that a world in which the wealthy are powerful is still a better world than one in which only the already powerful can acquire wealth?
Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all
Fascism entirely agrees with Mr. Maynard Keynes, despite the latter’s prominent position as a Liberal. In fact, Mr. Keynes’ excellent little book, The End of Laissez-Faire (l926) might, so far as it goes, serve as a useful introduction to fascist economics. There is scarcely anything to object to in it and there is much to applaud –Benito Mussolini
We may summarize the Marxian doctrine in this way: In the beginning there are the "material productive forces," i.e., the technological equipment of human productive efforts, the tools and machines. No question concerning their origin is permitted; they are, that is all; we must assume that they are dropped from heaven. These material productive forces compel men to enter into definite production relations which are independent of their wills. These production relations farther on determine society's juridical and political superstructure as well as all religious, artistic, and philosophical ideas
When the Vikings turned their backs upon a community of autarkic peasants whom they had plundered, the surviving victims began to work, to till the soil, and to build again. When the pirates returned after some years, they again found things to seize. But capitalism cannot stand such reiterated predatory raids. Its capital accumulation and investments are founded upon the expectation that no such expropriation will occur. If this expectation is absent, people will prefer to consume their capital instead of safeguarding it for the expropriators. This is the inherent error of all plans that aim at combining private ownership and reiterated expropriation.
The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted to no council and senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it
Liberalism is not anarchism, nor has it anything whatsoever to do with anarchism. The liberal understands quite clearly that without resort to compulsion, the existence of society would be endangered and that behind the rules of conduct whose observance is necessary to assure peaceful human cooperation must stand the threat of force if the whole edifice of society is not to be continually at the mercy of any one of its members. One must be in a position to compel the person who will not respect the lives, health, personal freedom, or private property of others to acquiesce in the rules of life in society. This is the function that the liberal doctrine assigns to the state: the protection of property, liberty, and peace…. Liberalism is therefore far from disputing the necessity of a machinery of state, a system of law, and a government. It is a grave misunderstanding to associate it in any way with the idea of anarchism. For the liberal, the state is an absolute necessity, since the most important tasks are incumbent upon it: the protection not only of private property, but also of peace, for in the absence of the latter the full benefits of private property cannot be reaped. -Mises
"If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion."
Oh, grandpa Mises, you.
Cites! >:-(
Same thought.
"Physics determines from the beginning the substance and history of metaphysics. Even in the theory of Being as "actus purus "(Thomas Aquinas), as absolute concept (Hegel), as eternal return of ever the same will to power (Nietzsche), metaphysics steadfastly remains physics"
Martin Heidegger
As we have said before, we are dealing with the supra-individual and consequently with the supra-rational order, which does not in any way mean the irrational: metaphysics cannot contradict reason, but it stands above reason, which has no bearing here except as a secondary means for the formulation and external expression of truths that lie beyond it’s province and outside it’s scope.
- René Guénon
(You started it.)
"Nothing is more to me than myself"
Max Stirner.
OK, I'm done.
That's cheating.
Alright, who's ready for some grade A 100 percent bullshit? Well if you are take a gander at this one:
"A human being is a spirit. But what is Spirit? Spirit is the self. The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation's relating itself to itself in the relation; the self is not the relation but is the relation's relating itself to itself."
-Soren Kierkegaard, "The Sickness Unto Death"
He literally starts off with that. This is the kind of crap that makes people run away crying from philosophy. The worst part is if this was actually stated in a way that made some sense without first reading the entirety of the work or having some insights into basic existentialism then it might be clear that this is actually a very deep insight.
“We have sunk to a depth in which re-statement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.” – George Orwell
@Neo:
I think part of the problem with that quote is that Kierkegaard is very much an Anti-Hegelian AND somewhat of an Aristotelian. So that may explain the language problem, addressing a Hegelian audience. There may also be a translation problem. The odd thing is, Kierkegaard can be very readable.
I've been putting the problem down to the fact that he wrote 150 years ago in Danish within the context of a very specific debate. I have similar problems with Nietzsche sometimes.
Just had this gem of a conversation with the campus book store lady:
Me: 'Can i get this economics book please?'
Book lady: 'For some reason the economics department decided somehow that the campus bookstore is making too much profit off their book, so they signed a contract with a bookstore out in town which of course the department got paid for. The campus bookstore makes a profit, but most of the profit goes back to the school. I dont understand what they are talking about, what does too much profit even mean?'
me: 'thats a great question, i dont see how someone could make 'too much profit' either.
Book lady: 'ya thats what i thought too. Why would anyone buy my books if i charged more than the 4 or 5 bookstores out in town? You see, I'm used to the English and philosophy socialist teachers, but in economics?! How can these AMERICAN Universities claim to teach free market economics all while being socialists? I think the biggest problem with this country are the people that profess to be a capitalist and then preach socialist ideas in the name of capitalism. I just dont understand it. I guess I wish i would of studied economics when i went to college.'
Funny how the campus book store lady knows more economics than the whole economics department.
LMAO it sounds like the economics department is trolling.
haha yep. Economics has been the ONLY department (obviously just talking about my school) to claim their classes are protected by intellectual property rights, and using information taught in class is property of the professors and any use of it for your own personal gain is illegal.
whats the point of college again!?!
Seems like we have a new convert coming up :P
If you hate your parents, the man or the establishment, don't show them up by getting wasted and wrapping your car around a tree. If you really want to rebel against your parents, out-learn them, outlive them, and know more than they do.
- Henry Rollins
I'm going to be 23 in January, I left school, and I work a low end job - this seems to be of my choosing my sitting, waiting, and thinking. It usually does not have a large affect on me, but lately I've contrasted my life's "success" or "progress" with others - something I generally don't do, and everyone my age is now graduating college and looking for careers if they don't already have them. I really have no interest or idea of what career I'd have, besides sitting, waiting, and thinking. I wonder what's to come, what change is next.
@Bert we're in the same boat my friend
"To Understand is to think; To think is to grow; To grow is to live." - Frank Herbert "The Jesus Incident"
"To Understand is to think; To think is to grow; To grow is to live."
- Frank Herbert "The Jesus Incident"
Now for some that may seem out of place here:
"More money, more problems." -Notorious B.I.G. "Nobody ever wants to buy peace, war prevails!" "The secret to succes is believing that you suceeding is more than an achievement, it's as important as you breathing." -ILL Bill
"More money, more problems."
-Notorious B.I.G.
"Nobody ever wants to buy peace, war prevails!"
"The secret to succes is believing that you suceeding is more than an achievement, it's as important as you breathing."
-ILL Bill
Yet the contents and structures of the unconscious are the result of the immemorial existential situations, especially of critical situations, and this is why the unconscious has a religious aura. For every existential crisis once again puts in question both the reality of the world and man’s presence in the world. This means that the existential crisis is, finally, “religious,” since on the archaic levels of culture being and the sacred are one. As we saw, it is the experience of the sacred that founds the world, and even the most elementary religion is, above all, an ontology. In other words, in so far as the unconscious is the result of countless existential experiences, it cannot but resemble the various religious universes. For religion is the paradigmatic solution for every existential crisis. It is the paradigmatic solution not only because it can be indefinitely repeated, but also because it is believed to have a transcendental origin and hence is valorized as a revelation received from an other, transhuman world. The religious solution not only resolves the crisis but at the same time makes existence “open” to values that are no longer contingent or particular, thus enabling man to transcend person situations and, finally, gain access to the world of spirit.
Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion
But why, then, do some enjoy spending so much time with me? You have heard, men of Athens; I told you the whole truth. It is because they enjoy hearing men examined who suppose they are wise, but are not. For it is not unpleasant.
- Socrates, Apologia (33b)
If I had a cake and ate it, it can be concluded that I do not have it anymore. HHH
My economics teacher just now: "With the Fed's announcement of QE3 and the new apple iphone should get the US out of this recession."
Alright. Let's sit back and twiddle our thumbs while we watch.
I like how your teacher thinks that 1 product can fix a whole economy.
I think many people do not grasp the weight that the term "Economy" holds.
“Since people are concerned that ‘X’ will not be provided, ‘X’ will naturally be provided by those who are concerned by its absence.""The sweetest of minds can harbor the harshest of men.”
http://voluntaryistreader.wordpress.org
Oh, and this is relevant to the iPhone stimulus:
http://krugman-in-wonderland.blogspot.com/2012/09/maybe-stimulus-bearing-space-aliens.html
thats exactly what im thinking. what he is saying is throw away your iphone 4s for an iphone 5 (for like .2 extra ghz) and we will finally spend our way out of a recession. more broken windows. (dont get me wrong, Apple has done great things for the economy, but to claim that ppl buying a single PHONE will get us out of our recession is crazy)
Stumbled upon this Benjamin Constant quote today:
They are so ready to spare us all sort of troubles, except those of obeying and paying! They will say to us: what, in the end, is the aim of your efforts, the motive of your labours, the object of all your hopes? Is it not happiness? Well, leave this happiness to us and we shall give it to you. No, Sirs, we must not leave it to them. No matter how touching such a tender commitment may be, let us ask the authorities to keep within their limits. Let them confine themselves to being just. We shall assume the responsibility of being happy for ourselves.
I love that first sentence. Of all the burdens that "liberals" want to spare us via the state, obeying and paying are never among them.
1. Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones, but by contrary extreme positions.
2. When the exceptional man handles the mediocre man with more delicate fingers than he applies to himself or to his equals, this is not merely kindness of heart—it is simply his duty… . Whom do I hate most heartily among the rabbles of today? The rabble of Socialists, the apostles to the Chandala, who undermine the workingman’s instincts, his pleasure, his feeling of contentment with his petty existence—who make him envious and teach him revenge… . Wrong never lies in unequal rights; it lies in the assertion of “equal” rights… . What is bad? But I have already answered: all that proceeds from weakness, from envy, from revenge. The anarchist and the Christian have the same ancestry… . ~ The Antichrist
3.
A question of power, not justice. For men who always consider the higher usefulness of a matter, socialism, if it really is the uprising against their oppressors of people oppressed and kept down for thousands of years, poses no problem of justice (with the ludicrous, weak question: "How far should one yield to its demands?"), but only a problem of power ( "To what extent can one use its demands?"). So it is like a natural power-steam, for example-which is either forced by man, as a god of machines, into his service, or, when there are mistakes in the machine (that is, errors of human calculation in its construction), wrecks itself and the human with it. To solve that question of power, one must know how strong socialism is, and in which of its modifications it can still be used as a mighty lever within the current political power game; in some circumstances one would even have to do everything possible to strengthen it. With every great force (even the most dangerous), humanity must think how to make it into a tool of its own intentions. Socialism gains a right only when the two powers, the representatives of the old and new, seem to have come to war, but then both parties prudently calculate how they may preserve themselves to best advantage, and this results in their desire for a treaty. No justice without a treaty. Until now, however, there has been neither war in the indicated territory, nor treaties, and thus no rights, and no "ought" either. __________________________________________
Socialism in respect to its means. Socialism is the visionary younger brother of an almost decrepit despotism, whose heir it wants to be. Thus its efforts are reactionary in the deepest sense. For it desires a wealth of executive power, as only despotism had it; indeed, it outdoes everything in the past by striving for the downright destruction of the individual, which it sees as an unjustified luxury of nature, and which it intends to improve into an expedient organ of the community. Socialism crops up in the vicinity of all excessive displays of power because of its relation to it, like the typical old socialist Plato, at the court of the Sicilian tyrant;11 it desires (and in certain circumstances, furthers) the Caesarean power state of this century, because, as we said, it would like to be its heir. But even this inheritance would not suffice for its purposes; it needs the most submissive subjugation of all citizens to the absolute state, the like of which has never existed. And since it cannot even count any longer on the old religious piety towards the state, having rather always to work automatically to eliminate piety (because it works on the elimination of all existing states), it can only hope to exist here and there for short periods of time by means of the most extreme terrorism. Therefore, it secretly prepares for reigns of terror, and drives the word "justice" like a nail into the heads of the semieducated masses, to rob them completely of their reason (after this reason has already suffered a great deal from its semieducation), and to give them a good conscience for the evil game that they are supposed to play. Socialism can serve as a rather brutal and forceful way to teach the danger of all accumulations of state power, and to that extent instill one with distrust of the state itself. When its rough voice chimes in with the battle cry "As much state as possible," it will at first make the cry noisier than ever; but soon the opposite cry will be heard with strength the greater: "As little state as possible."
- Human, All Too Human.
4. The over-all degeneration of man down to what today appears to the socialist dolts and flatheads as their "man of the future"-as their ideal-this degeneration and diminution of man into the perfect herd animal, this animalization of man into the dwarf animal of equal rights and claims, is possible, there is no doubt of it. Anyonewho has once thought through this possibility to the end knows one kind of nausea that other men don't know-but perhaps also a new task! (BGE)
5. Active, successful natures act, not according to the dictum "know thyself," but as if there hovered before them the commandment: will a self and thou shalt become a self.
6. My idea is that every specific body strives to become master over all space and to extend its force (its will to power) and to thrust back all that resists its extension. But it continually encounters similar efforts on the part of other bodies and ends by coming to an arrangement ("union") with those of them that are sufficiently related to it: thus they then conspire together for power. And the process goes on.
Some Nietzsche when thinking of "market as process", utilitarianism, and socialism. Been awhile since I looked at HATH or Will To power, hence the quotes.
"The older morality, namely Kant's, demands from the individual those actions that one desires from all men--a nice, naive idea, as if everyone without further ado would know which manner of action would benefit the whole of mankind, that is, which actions were desirable at all. It is a theory like that of free trade, which assumes that a general harmony would have to result of itself, according to innate laws of melioration."
~ Human, All Too Human
Dont ever forget that what hitler did in germany was legal.
-Martin Luther King Jr.
"Teachers used to tell school kids that anyone can be president. This is like saying anyone can go to Hell. It's not an inspiration; it's a threat." -Lew Rockwell
Two quotes from Joseph Campbell on discussing Star Wars, pretty relevant.
"Darth Vader has not developed his own humanity. He's a robot. He's a bureaucrat, living not in terms of himself but in terms of an imposed system. This is the threat to our lives that we all face today. Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system to the attainment of human purposes? How do you relate to the system so that you are not compulsively serving it? It doesn't help to try to change it to accord with your system of thought. The momentum of history behind it is too great for anything really significant to evolve from that kind of action. The thing to do is learn to live in your period of history as a human being. That's something else, and it can be done."
"Star Wars deals with the essential problem: Is the machine going to control humanity, or is the machine going to serve humanity? Darth Vader is a man taken over by a machine, he becomes a machine, and the state itself is a machine. There is no humanity in the state. What runs the world is economics and politics, and they have nothing to do with the spiritual life."
"There's a point, far out there when the structures fail you, and the rules aren't weapons anymore, they're... shackles, letting the bad guy get ahead. One day... you may face such a moment of crisis. And in that moment, I hope you have a friend like I did, to plunge their hands into the filth so that you can keep yours clean!"
- Jim Gordon (The Dark Knight Rises)