Keynes, monetarism and the death of capitalism

Here's an exchange on FaceBook, in late January, where I answer a pretty common objection to revolutionary Marxist perspectives.


Choppa Morph
If this system is Keynsian, I'm God Almighty. What all the monetarian butchers are doing (ref Kissinger and Pinochet as obvious examples) are trying to hold back the inevitable Keynsian/New Deal swing of the pendulum by stuffing their finge If this system is Keynsian, I'm God Almighty. What all the monetarian butchers are doing (ref Kissinger and Pinochet as obvious examples) are trying to hold back the inevitable Keynsian/New Deal swing of the pendulum by stuffing their fingers in the hole in the dyke. First wipe out as much capital as possible during the recession, then open the floodgates with huge public subsidies. The root cause (the capitalist system itself - social production being siphoned off into private profit and crippled irredeemably in the process) can't be tackled by either alternative. Good night, America, and good luck.

M B Choppa - I'm trying to make sense out of each of your statements, but I'm struggling... what is "the inevitable Keynsian[sic]/New Deal swing of the pendulum" in terms someone simple like me can understand? "First wipe out as much capital as possible during the recession, then open the floodgates with huge public subsidies." - is this your conspiracy theory as to what is going on, or is this your solution?

Choppa Morph The pendulum swing is comparable to all previous "stop-go" government policies, but in this case parallel to the gigantic swing between the paralysing laissez-faire monetarism of the early Great Depression and the massive state intervention of the New Deal of the recovery in the late Depression. Wiping out capital is what happened with the destruction of productive companies and farms after 1929 - when they had gone bust the fewer companies that were left had a lot more scope to make bigger profits (less competition and lots of demand to rebuild after the mayhem.
This is no conspiracy theory, it's blatantly obvious. It's like when astronomers were compelled to admit that the earth goes round the sun and not vice versa. Authority (the Church and State) refused to except any explanations except the ones they authorized. Today's star-gazing geo-centrists are the officially authorized academic, financial and institutional economists. Alternative explanations (notably Marxist ones - even the flabby pale pink diluted beyond recognition kind) are derided, denigrated, and prohibited. In many bourgeois countries (notably military dictatorships or other repressive regimes made in the USA) Marxists (especially revolutionary ones) advocating the replacement of a capitalist system with a non-capitalist system can land you in jail and get you tortured or even killed.
Given this kind of pressure to conform it's not surprising that a lot of people, like yourself, refuse to even contemplate a society on a different socio-economic foundation, even though history is shot through with such change. From isolated community to "civilized" (ie city-based, official- and priest-ridden) slavery to feudal principalities and kingdoms to bourgeois municipalities and eventually to bourgeois states and a capitalist world economy. The next great change (to non-capitalist society) is already under way but geo-centric people blindfolded and hooded by bourgeois propaganda about politics and economics can't see it or even conceptualize it.The Soviet Union, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, China and Cuba have all shown that a capitalist system can be overthrown and a non-capitalist society can be run for decades despite being poverty-stricken, war-torn, isolated, vilified, attacked, and oppressively managed.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls, Mr Moneybags in Wall Street. It tolls for thee.




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How to argue with irrationality and ignorance

This is a FaceBook comment I made on a photo with the text "Paul Krugmann is tired of trying to reason with you people". "You people" being those responsible for the crisis -- ie to be explicit, capitalists and their bourgeois goon governments.


They use irrationality and ignorance as weapons. They use lethal and extremely painful violence as arguments. They don't reason. Logic and reason (ie science and civilization in the sense of culture and progress for humanity) need a shared and democratic value base to build on. We need to meet their brutality and violence in a way that can neutralize them and allow us to disarm them and remove them from the power they now have. This means that however much we need to reason and argue rationally among ourselves to determine our actions, our actions themselves will need sufficient force and ruthlessness to stop them in their tracks and bring them down. Weeping, wailing, praying, turning cheeks (even bumcheeks), asking why, smashing shop windows, or chucking molotov cocktails at cops won't do it. Mass mobilizations with clear political demands sometimes stops them in their tracks (Egypt), but not always (Iran, Syria, the West pre-Iraq-war).
So, time to start talking revolution, cos that's what's needed.

Unprofessional advice on professional editing

A practising professional editor just wrote a terrible blog post on common "grammatical errors":
http://litreactor.com/columns/20-common-grammar-mistakes-that-almost-everyone-gets-wrong


I commented as follows:

I agree with jcasey and the others who think this is a bad article. It's also dangerous and destructive.

Dangerous, because it misrepresents so many aspects of language use, even written fairly formal usage, ie it's misleading. And it's misleading to a high degree and so much the worse because it's written by a practising editor, ie someone sitting in judgment.

Which is why it's destructive - it puts all the focus of writing on the wrong things. A lot of commentators have pointed out that most of the quibbles are about word use, not grammatical structures. Since a lot of the points are (to say the least) "moot", a lot of inexperienced or unsure reader/writers will become even more anxious about their use of language and dry up rather than state their views.

Mark makes a lot of useful distinctions, including prescriptive and descriptive. But prescription, ie language dictatorship, is rooted in description regardless. The distinction of "educated" is more useful, but then the question is educated to what degree? And with what result?

A real education won't lead to mechanical pedantry, and mechanical pedantry is exactly what this article gives us. It's education to the level of Word's grammar and usage check. God help us all. Semi-educated, half-baked. A mid-level language bureaucrat's plateau. Style and usage by decree.

This worked partially and for a time in the heyday of Classical French, but it's never ever worked in English, and in fact it has only served to provoke the scorn and amusement of good English writers. Mocking linguistic hyper-correctness and up-tight (f)rigidity is a red-blooded tradition in our language, as is its whoring around with its own dialects and each and every other language it comes into contact with.

Educated users of language who wants to get their ideas across with vigour (yes I'm British) and grace will follow the adage: "Laws are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools". There are NO FORMAL RULES in English. There are deep-seated grammatical (syntactical, lexical and phonological rules), and breaking these will break communication to a greater or lesser extent, but ain't no way nohow breaking formal rules will blunt an argument or detract from its power. (Check out Labov's 1972 article "Academic Ignorance and Black Intelligence" for an incontrovertible demonstration of this.)

Or, as the King of Hearts said to Alice:

"Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves."