Why so many of us have become Marxists: Video

[klapse]

People believing in Marxism never prevented the 1% from controlling everything. The only political structure that ever led to a thriving middle class was liberty, private property, and a european high-trust society.

ElPoco join libertariansforum if you would like some educated discussion.

Did you notice that central banking was part of the communist manifesto?

 

[Haraldur]

The only political structure that ever led to a thriving middle class was

According to Thomas Piketty and others, the only political circumstance that ever led to a thriving middle class was around 35 years of war, economic turmoil, revolution and general crisis starting in or before 1914, plus the 20-30 years of recovery that followed it -- partly because the wealth (and therefore unearned income) of the rich was largely destroyed (so, arguably NOT a good thing, overall). Since then inequality has been stable or increasing. Here is the wealth inequality of the USA, which was little affected by WW1 (aside from a recession just after it; Western Europe went from a greater extreme of inequality (60-ish% to the top 1%) to even less than the USA, but I could not quickly find the charts):

If we are (un)lucky, Trump may be a new crisis like this.

I have also heard that one reason why Latin America is less equal than Western Europe is that they were little affected by the wars of the 20th century -- but I am not an expert.

liberty, private property, and a european high-trust society.

I know that this is not really fair as an argument, but I find it interesting that the country where most of the talk about "liberty" and private property seems to come from, the USA, seems rather low-trust compared to, say, the Nordic countries or Germany. I wonder how that contributes to the popularity of right-wing "libertarianism" over there.

 

[klapse]

According to Thomas Piketty and others, the only political circumstance that ever led to a thriving middle class was around 35 years of war, economic turmoil, revolution and general crisis starting in or before 1914, plus the 20-30 years of recovery that followed it -- partly because the wealth (and therefore unearned income) of the rich was largely destroyed (so, arguably NOT a good thing, overall). Since then inequality has been stable or increasing. Here is the wealth inequality of the USA, which was little affected by WW1 (aside from a recession just after it; Western Europe went from a greater extreme of inequality (60-ish% to the top 1%) to even less than the USA, but I could not quickly find the charts):

If we are (un)lucky, Trump may be a new crisis like this.

I have also heard that one reason why Latin America is less equal than Western Europe is that they were little affected by the wars of the 20th century -- but I am not an expert.



I know that this is not really fair as an argument, but I find it interesting that the country where most of the talk about "liberty" and private property seems to come from, the USA, seems rather low-trust compared to, say, the Nordic countries or Germany. I wonder how that contributes to the popularity of right-wing "libertarianism" over there.

Well this is a great post.

The 'capitalist' world increases the state--control exponentially. Then people wonder why they are getting raped.

hmmmmmmm

 

[levi]

I don't see anything exponential in that graph, but it does seem to support the theory that times of peace and stability let the rich get richer faster than the poor can (which seems self-evident to me - those living hand to mouth lives can't save and get interest, and somewhere near the other end of the scale only really quite rich people can game the property markets). It's hard to say that's because those periods are capitalist or not - I can't decide whether wartime is a particularly capitalist or uncapitalist time, but postwar in the UK at least was a decidedly uncapitalist time, assuming the redistribution of wealth through progressive taxation is an anti-capitalist idea.

In short, I'm not sure how capitalist a society is is the best metric for linking the growth of the super-rich, although if you said how market-focussed an economy was is linked I probably wouldn't bat an eyelid, and in some senses, maybe that's what you meant. Certainly Reagan's market relaxation policies helped the rich get richer, combined with advances in technology that the rich can afford to use more than the poor.