Like so much else that dominated the twentieth century, Marxist “economics” was so ridiculous that nobody even talks about what it REALLY said. For example, Marx dealt with the “diamond-water paradox” by saying that if a person is dying of thirst in the middle of the desert, water is NOT more precious to him than diamonds.
The diamond-water paradox was an old challenge to supply and demand theory which said that, if diamonds are worth more in supply and demand terms, why is it that a person dying of thirst in the desert would rather find a ton of water than a ton of diamonds? Obviously, the value of anything follows supply and demand, and supply and demand depend on location and circumstances. Your demand for water is greater if you are thirsty, and it is absolute if you are thirsting to death and there is no water within a hundred miles of you.
Marx said that location and circumstances had nothing to do with the value of anything. The value of anything, said Marx, was the “objective labor time” involved in MAKING it. This is called the Labor Theory of Value. So the value of diamonds and of water is equal to the labor time each takes to produce. So if you stumbled on water in the desert, the water had no economic value.
This idea of value made some problems for Communist planners when it came to how many resources they should allocate to transportation. If goods are worth no more at one end of the railroad track line than at the other end, why build the track at all?
And, of course, this Labor Theory of Value REALLY screwed up statistics on economic growth. The hundred cars you build the first year are enormously costly. As mass production increases, each one costs less, at least in a market economy. But in a Marxist economy, all the later cars are just as valuable as the first ones.
And, of course, according to the Labor Theory of Value, there is no economic progress. If one farmer can feed a hundred Americans well and it takes seventy-five Russian farmers to feed twenty-five non-farmers, and both groups work the same number of hours, only the objective labor time, the hours, count. So the two groups are equally productive.
One should laugh out loud at “Marxist economics” the way we do at a “magician’s” spells, but many Western European scientific organizations declare Marx to have been a great scientist.
This objective labor time infested our society before Marx was born. Certainly Thomas Edison was no Marxist, but his “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration” is the same Marxist insanity. He wanted people to think that he did all his inventing because of his VIRTUE, which showed how wonderful a guy he was, rather than because he happened to be born smart in the right things at the right time. So if anybody else had been willing to work as hard as he did, they too would have invented thousands of things, including the electric light and the phonograph. There just had never been anybody as virtuous as Thomas Edison in all of history before.
Another example of this kind of thinking is the idea that I benefit from fellow citizens who are good citizens “because they vote and pay taxes.” I agree that if they pay taxes it is probably good for me, because the government is going to get that money and if it doesn’t get it from them it will get it from me. But VOTE? Why in heaven’s name should I be grateful to someone else for watering down my vote with his own? If he votes my way, fine. If he votes the other way, I am supposed to admire him because he VOTED.
But the real kicker in this is the labor theory of value when it comes to things like “doctors and lawyers.”
People equate these two fields of endeavor, but one is productive occupation and the other is not.
Doctors are useful to me. At best, all the efforts of all the lawyers are a zero sum game. In fact they are not only valueless they clog up the system so much that it is estimated that each of the two and a half million lawyers in America cost us a million dollars a year apiece by impeding every kind of actual production.
There is not the slightest shred of evidence that good lawyers produce ANYTHING. Only a good Marxist or some other kind of idiot could say that forty years of detailed legal experience and knowledge produce anything anybody wants. This crappy reasoning is contained in the idea “You can buy justice.”
No, you can’t buy justice. You can buy ACQUITTAL, and it is scary to have people serving on juries who say that acquittal is the same thing as justice.
A lawyer who gives you a long, impressive spiel about cases and Latin phrases in case law is exactly like an ancient Egyptian priest who could recite the complete service for making the sun come up in the morning. All the effort, all the time, all the experience and he is less useful than a child taking out chamber pots.
And Marx would say that chamber pots should still be used. They required objective labor time, you know.
#1 by Pain on 12/16/2006 - 2:59 pm
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Brilliant.
#2 by stevenp on 12/16/2006 - 4:10 pm
There are three types of economic activity. Production and consumption everyone is familiar with. But the third is less well known: Transfer.
Moving wealth from Mr. A to Mr. B (while taking a cut) is transfer. Politicians and lawyers are agents of transfer.
Transfer is not production. Transfer is transfer.
To draw an analogy to the animal world: The animals that hunter/gather their food are producers; the stomach parasites that take a cut of that work for themselves are agents of transfer.
#3 by Dave on 12/16/2006 - 4:21 pm
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There is a famous ZAP comic book cover by Robert Crumb of hippy era fame.
Mr. Natural is tooling down the road with his wife and kids in an open car of early 30s vintage looking out on the American urban landscape.
Mr. Natural turns to his wife and asks: “Is dis a system?”
To all Marxists, Austrians, Chicagoans, Keynesians, Free Traders, Trade Protectionists, academic and brokerage economists, and anybody else concerned about economics in any why whatsoever:
THE ANSWER IS NO.
#4 by Alan B. on 12/16/2006 - 5:44 pm
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In retrospect, when the concepts and theories of Marxism are laid out and compared objectively against opposing theories of economics, Marxism in reality IS, fantasy and insanity. The “diamond-water paradox” speaks for itself, it says, if a person is dying of thirst in the middle of the desert, water is NOT more precious to him than diamonds. Bob is correct when he said, if enough people laughed at the stupidity of Marxism millions of lives would have been saved. Marx referred to diamonds when he could have used a million other objects in this nutty concept. This made me wonder about this, Marx was a Jew, and Jews have a fixation material things like Jems and gold, Jews also frowned apon manual labor. Marx was also considered an intellectual idealist or a dead beat , productive men work hard in life and valued the things many take for granted. Marx never exerted himself enough in life to know what a real thirst IS, one must contribute something of worth to have a true understanding of economics, the fruits of one’s labor.
Marx’s may fit the description of a sociopath, rather than looking at the benefits of capitalism, Marx was fixated on exploitation of the workers and the greed of the exploiters, the business owners. The industrial revolution in the early stages had its troubles, labor relations, pollution and over crowding in the cities, like all problems they were solved by supply and demand. Free people in a free economy, the engineers, craftsmen and others solved these troubles, these productive elements of society over came the ill effects of rapid industrialization, each benefited from the other. Supply and demand is a simple concept, a retard can understand it, so how did Marx miss it. Marx lived in a fantasy world, human nature was evil and all human beings live to take advantage of others. He viewed the masses as exploitable cattle and not as human beings, Marx’s never envisioned anything good, dog eat dog was his miserable world. Communism was mans salvation to Marx, in his world the masses would be equal, government would provide their needs. So in reality Marx and the rest of the like-minded rift raft would be the herdsmen tending the flock of sheeple, individualism could not exist. What a sick and perverted mind this psycho possessed. In reality Marxism IS mass exploitation, people are material a commodity to be used and disposed of. Human productivity along with supply and demand took a back seat to labor, keep the sheeple busy and they will not have time to notice they are being exploited, this IS plain madness, this utopia murdered 100 million people.
#5 by Mark on 12/16/2006 - 10:11 pm
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Peter, glad to see you’re still with us!
#6 by Mark on 12/17/2006 - 12:42 pm
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“There is not the slightest shred of evidence that good lawyers produce ANYTHING. Only a good Marxist or some other kind of idiot could say that forty years of detailed legal experience and knowledge produce anything anybody wants.”
I believe the same thing could be said about posters on this blog (not you, Bob) who rant and rant and rant but never post the Mantra or stand outside a college dorm to hand out flyers or give speaches or join pro white groups and actually DO SOMETHING. There’s a lot of preaching to the choir in here, a lot of chest beating, a lot of useless talk and I daresay little else.
#7 by kyle on 12/17/2006 - 6:05 pm
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Mark,
You, the honorary sergeant of this blog, should know that passive aggressive behavior is despicable. In the piece “libanon’s non-fuhrer” Bob took to a childish rant. He set down a valuable line for me, but what pissed me off was that he was passive aggressive in doing it. Anyone with half a brain would know that it was directed at myself, like you’ve just done with Alan.
Grow some balls or change your name to Mary. I expect this out of a metrosexual but not you Mark, Bob.
#8 by Alan B. on 12/17/2006 - 7:50 pm
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What did I tell you Bob, mark I have no beef with you so point your anger at the enemy we all want to defeat, the PC nuts. This sort of tit for tat business between you and I is as distructive to our cause as Parker’s knee jerk conversion to PC social design mumbo jumbo. Mark your a fighter I respect you, when we attack one another unjustly we focus our energy away from our real target, lets stay on course and if I offended you, then I am sorry. One other thing, because I havent alerted the room that I have post the mantra x number of times gives you the right to accuse me of not spreading our message, I am a grown man, I could careless what anybody assumes, this fight isn’t about me, its for the future generations of our people, thats all that matters. I will say that I have post the mantra more often than you think. Your a hard ass Mark, thats good, I like a team player with a mean streak in them, its a sign of toughness.
#9 by Mark on 12/17/2006 - 8:40 pm
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“Grow some balls or change your name to Mary. I expect this out of a metrosexual but not you Mark, Bob.”
You made me laugh. That was good and I respect you for it. You also nailed me where it hurts and for that I respect you even more.
Ok, since you asked for it, cards on the table.
You are correct, I do not respect Alan B — or should I say — the type of person I think Alan B is.
I’m sure he feels equally discordant with me. So be it. I don’t know him personally and there’s nothing personal in my disrespect, I wish him well, but when waging a war men act like men and children throw tantrums.
I’m not going to single him out for your satisfaction, however. It would prove I have even fewer than what most people give me credit for. Instead, let me explain the type of person I have a hard time respecting, and if you want to apply it to one or a dozen people on here, well, that’s your head game.
The type of person I disrespect most is a talker, brave when in a crowd, a braggart when there is no possible negative repurcussions, a flag waver when it’s popular, a soldier only in uniform.
We’ve all seen this type of person. They talk a good game but do little else. The only time I’ve found you can really count on them is when oratory is in session and the soap box is vacant. Otherwise, you’re left to dig your own trenches.
I’ve found this type loves to prattle on, endlessly. Of about what they would do if a situation arose. Of what they are planning on doing. Of what should be done. Granted, they know their facts and you hope at some point they give elbow grease the ol’ college try, but you rarely, if ever, see this type marching alongside anyone in the face of physical threat.
This type of person is prevalent on Stormfront. Once the war begins in earnest they’re gonna’ lead a charge Sterling Price would envy. Until then their plan is to talk the enemy into Hades. Meanwhile, Bob, Peter, Dave, myself, and a dozen others on here (you included, I hope) are posting the Mantra, stirring up hornets nests with folks we know (and don’t know), and are trying to do what we can to turn this mess around.
Is that plain enough for you?
#10 by kyle on 12/17/2006 - 10:24 pm
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I have a correction to make to my comment above. In “Libanon’s non-fuhrer”, I remembered more “I am not your fuhrer”. I confused my bitching about it with the actual article. It was not a childish rant, but a valuable line in the sand like I said above.
My apologies Bob.
#11 by kyle on 12/19/2006 - 9:18 am
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Crystal clear Mark.