I’m in no way a fan of modern day liberalism but having said that I think this author misunderstands it and accuses it of something it’s not guilty of. He says…
This is what liberals, who think that human wellbeing consists in the consumption of goods and services, cannot understand. Capitalism piles up consumer goods but deprives more and more of us of the satisfaction of genuine work. A good trade, when it's a question of meeting basic needs. But once they are met -- they are met; they are finite; tho liberals, from Mill to DeLong, deny it -- all the bacchanals in the world are no substitute for the knowledge that one has produced something worthwhile by one's own free efforts.
The problem with that statement is it’s based on a straw man argument that modern liberals are all Marxists. In my experience the modern liberal has evolved beyond Marx’s theories to a hybrid Captalistic/Marxist philosophy that understands the necessity of Captialism but seeks to equalize the resulting wealth created by it.
So modern liberalism is concerned with the rewards of one’s labors where as Marxist theory was concerned with both that and choosing which labor people undertook. Meaning liberals really don't want to rob anyone of satisfaction in one's work they simply want to redistribute some of the compensation one gets for said work.
(and in fairness Marx only advocated a planned society in which people’s abilities were assessed and applied in a way that was best for society. So while a government using that policy might force you to do the work they wanted it should, in theory, have been something you excelled at and could be satisfied in)
My reading of the text was that he was praising Marx's concept of work and more or less attacking liberals for not having it. He claims old Karl agree that creative, productive activity is superior to consumption. I see not mention of the Marxist concept of a planned economy in the text either.
There are strong indications that B. Traven was a revolutionary German Marxist who escaped the failed Sparticus rebellion after WWI, btw.
Honestly you're probably right when put in that context (I had no idea who B. Traven was) but if that's the case this post is kind of odd. It ignores the end result of every government based on Marx's theories that has ever existed in the history of man.
I mean really, does anyone think people living in communist Russia and being assigned an occupation based on an aptitude test weren't "alienated" from their work (to use Marx's term)?
Also it's odd to quote Jesus while defending Karl Marx (who famously called Religion the opiate of the masses and claimed true happiness could only be achieved when religion was abolished)
Anyway, as I said, you're almost certainly right I'm just saying my mistake wasn't entirely stupid ;)
> It ignores the end result of every government based on Marx's theories that has ever existed in the history of man.
Marx wrote a brilliant critique of capitalism, but failed miserably when it came to designing what the replacement would be. He believed that an almost supernatural rationality would evolve out of the inherent contradictions of capitalism and the worker/ owner conflict; organizing society rationally from the top down is really the only thing of his that made it into supposedly marxist regimes.
Don't judge Marx by Russia -- read Marx. Or, well, don't pretend to know what Marx said...
He also believed very strongly that "communism" could only appear in a society after it had gone through its capitalist stage thoroughly -- he was hoping for Great Britain to become communist, and the idea of an agrarian society like China or Russia becoming communist was just goofy.
Marx also never foresaw the compromises that would happen in an increasingly wealthy and unionized society, and which have forestalled any revolutionary drive (as the builder of the first tract home developments said: people with mortgages and a postage stamp worth of land don't join the CP.)
Also "liberal" here refers to liberal as in "neo-liberal": those who support the freeing up of regulation and tradition in the support of capitalism. You may be using "liberal" in the current usage of "leftwing and sort of socialist" which it never meant originally. This liberalism very much is tied up with "utilitarianism", which basically thinks that everything can be reckoned in terms of consumer utility; the idea that we are driven by consumption and pleasure (as in "the pleasure principle") pervades our society, but is not necessarily the basic scientific principle that economists and Freudians pretend it is; meaningful work or prestige might be contenders...
Not really, because he makes a fundamental mistake. He thinks those that hold capital use violence and oppression against the masses.
But he's got the cause and effect wrong - the people who use violence and oppression wind up seizing capital.
What's the difference? Well, look at history. It's not the merchants and traders and inventors and builders that oppress people - it's the people with swords and guns. Marx's prescription to that is that the oppressed people grab swords and guns and raise some hell, and take over, and then... whoops.
The accumulation of resources (private property) and voluntary exchange (capitalism) aren't problems. Violence, coercion, oppression is the problem. Unfortunately, Marx gets the cause and effect backwards. He sees violent people holding capital, and blames the capital instead of the violence. He then says the people without capital should use violence to seize it... with predictably bad results.
Marx didn't understand capitalism - he never did productive work in his life. The cause of oppression stems from violence and coercion, not accumulation of resources and voluntary exchange.
> Not really, because he makes a fundamental mistake. He thinks those that hold capital use violence and oppression against the masses.
You will disagree, I would imagine, but Marx would argue that one of the most important features of capitalism is that it appears to be an abstract relationship of buying and selling sans violence, even as it is very much a system of oppression of one class over another. He doesn't forget that the swords are put away (though they come out when necessary to sustain the market relationships), he just disagrees with you that forcing a whole lot of people to trade their labor on the market (at a low-ish price, since they don't control the market environment) is any less oppressive than telling a peasant explicitly to till the soil or get killed.
No offense, but he understood capitalism a lot better than you -- he just didn't believe capitalists when they said "it's not the merchants and traders ... that oppress people"
This is what liberals, who think that human wellbeing consists in the consumption of goods and services, cannot understand. Capitalism piles up consumer goods but deprives more and more of us of the satisfaction of genuine work. A good trade, when it's a question of meeting basic needs. But once they are met -- they are met; they are finite; tho liberals, from Mill to DeLong, deny it -- all the bacchanals in the world are no substitute for the knowledge that one has produced something worthwhile by one's own free efforts.
The problem with that statement is it’s based on a straw man argument that modern liberals are all Marxists. In my experience the modern liberal has evolved beyond Marx’s theories to a hybrid Captalistic/Marxist philosophy that understands the necessity of Captialism but seeks to equalize the resulting wealth created by it.
So modern liberalism is concerned with the rewards of one’s labors where as Marxist theory was concerned with both that and choosing which labor people undertook. Meaning liberals really don't want to rob anyone of satisfaction in one's work they simply want to redistribute some of the compensation one gets for said work.
(and in fairness Marx only advocated a planned society in which people’s abilities were assessed and applied in a way that was best for society. So while a government using that policy might force you to do the work they wanted it should, in theory, have been something you excelled at and could be satisfied in)