chris_gerrib (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
chris_gerrib) wrote2010-07-07 01:04 pm
chris_gerrib) wrote2010-07-07 01:04 pm
Entry tags:
Competition
So, via Making Light, I find this Marxist critique of the financial crisis in cartoon format. It's an 11-minute video, and actually not terribly off base.
The final argument boils down to this (I paraphrase): In the 1970s, we had financial problems because labor had gotten too powerful. This 'problem' was fixed by outsourcing and off-shoring. We now have a problem where finance is too powerful, and it's being 'fixed' by the sovereign debt crisis in Europe.
The Marxist critique goes wrong when it argues that getting rid of the 'inherent contradictions' (AKA "conflicts") in the capitalist system is either possible or desirable. Getting rid of these contradictions is like getting rid of predator / prey relationships in ecology - neither possible nor desirable.
In ecology, predator species obviously need prey to eat. Prey species need predators to prevent overpopulation, which leads to habitat destruction. But expecting this relationship to be anything but adversarial is to live in a fantasy world.
Libertarians, to their credit, understand this need for competition. Where they go wrong is their desire for the competition to be as 'red of tooth and claw' as that in nature. As the French and Russian aristocracy discovered, there are more poor people (prey) then rich (predators) and the poor people can fight back.
The trick is to resolve the conflicts via peaceful means. That means government, regulation and the ballot box.
The final argument boils down to this (I paraphrase): In the 1970s, we had financial problems because labor had gotten too powerful. This 'problem' was fixed by outsourcing and off-shoring. We now have a problem where finance is too powerful, and it's being 'fixed' by the sovereign debt crisis in Europe.
The Marxist critique goes wrong when it argues that getting rid of the 'inherent contradictions' (AKA "conflicts") in the capitalist system is either possible or desirable. Getting rid of these contradictions is like getting rid of predator / prey relationships in ecology - neither possible nor desirable.
In ecology, predator species obviously need prey to eat. Prey species need predators to prevent overpopulation, which leads to habitat destruction. But expecting this relationship to be anything but adversarial is to live in a fantasy world.
Libertarians, to their credit, understand this need for competition. Where they go wrong is their desire for the competition to be as 'red of tooth and claw' as that in nature. As the French and Russian aristocracy discovered, there are more poor people (prey) then rich (predators) and the poor people can fight back.
The trick is to resolve the conflicts via peaceful means. That means government, regulation and the ballot box.
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I think your predator/prey analogy is really weak, but rather ironic because it is an image straight out of communist propaganda - vampire capitalism. It's weak because capitalism is a lot more complicated than that, because capitalism hasn't always meant a transfer of wealth straight up the power structure; and two, capitalism is an economic system, not a state of nature, so it is a tremendous failure of imagination to think it's the best we can do, and accept the downsides.
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