Silliest Statement I've Read All Day

From a blog entry by Randall Holcombe, otherwise unknown to me, which I first took to be a howler reprinted as comedy from a student exam:

Marx was a supporter of unions, because unions could give workers some collective power to limit their exploitation. Legislation like the proposed “card check” to extend union representation, and the ceding of substantial shares of GM and Chrysler to the UAW are some examples of Marx’s ideology at work.

Boy, if that is what passes for teaching at Florida State, then we have one more argument for the abolition of public education.

Let's begin. Of course Marx said nice things about unions. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. And if the bourgeoisie is going to get itself organized, then the workers had better get organized too.

But the whole point of the bourgeois-proletarian conflict is that it is a point of transition, where the name of the game is dynamism. It depends on--it makes headway among--a proletariat when the proletariat is fluid, alien, ungovernable and ungoverned. Comes the revolution, all this will pass a way.

And this is why Marxism in its golden age had no more implacable enemy than a strong, focused, effective program of democratic trade unionism. Marxism is revolution. Trade unionism is stability and order. The democracies that emerged as bulwarks against Russian Communism in Europe understood that they knew that the way to fight off Communism was to nurture the unions and keep them strong. So did the Soviets, who understood that nothing stood higher in the program of revolution than to isolate the unions and leave them emasculated and paralyzed.

Do unions go sour? Of course. Recall Enoch Powell's dictum that all politics ends in failure. Unions get corrupt, entrenched, elitist, the enemies of a dynamic society. Ironically it is in this phase that unions most evidently lose precisely what made them so attractive to Marx--their energy and creativity as part of a functioning economy. It's a delicate balancing act, this attempt at equipoise between anarchy and reaction. But any way you read it, if you want to get to the socialist nirvana, the unions must be pushed out of the way. So to say that union programs are "some examples of Marx’s ideology at work"--that's a pretty good giveaway of a writer who doesn't understand the first thing of what Marxism was about.

Extra credit question: Marx liked cigars. Cigar smoking is an "example[] of Marx’s ideology at work.

What Marx Said, Or Did Not Say, or Maybe He Did

My friend Ignoto shipped me the quote that follows, reporting with a chortle that he intended to send it on to a moonbat conservative of our mutual acquaintance:

Owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be saved by the government and nationalized; the State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism.

--Karl Marx, 1867

Hm, doesn't sound right. Working class buy goods? In 1867? Houses? Technology. Criminentlies.

A moment's Googling made it clear that this one has gone viral, usually with uncritical acceptance. There are a few skeptics, and in particular this pretty good take-down from Megan McAradle, whose integrity is put in doubt only by her claim to have read all three volumes of the master's masterwork.

But scroll down to the comment of one James Heartfield, hitherto unknown to me, who offers up this totally non-bogus bit of Marx:

"A larger part of their own surplus product, always increasing and continually transformed into additional capital, comes back to them in the shape of means of payment, so that they can extend the circle of their enjoyments; can make some additions to their consumption funds of clothes, furniture, &c., and can lay by a small reserve-funds of money. But just as little as better clothing, food, and treatment, and a larger peculium, do away with the exploitation of the slave, so little do they set aside that of the worker. A rise in the price of labour, as a consequence of accumulation of capital, only means in fact, that the length and weight of the golden chain the wage-worker has already forged for himself, allow of a relaxation of the tension of it." [Das Kapital] Chapter 25, p 579-580, Lawrence and Wishart edition.

So I'd say he--the anonymous mischief-maker--had it just about right. Just a free translation.

Afterthought: Puts me in mind of an insight I picked up from--I'm not sure, could be Hyman Minsky--about Keynes in the great depression. Minsky (?) points out that the standard conservative mantra about the great depression was that there was nothing you could do about it except suck it up, cross your legs and think of England. And the Marxists believed essentially the same thing: they believed that capitalism was unstable, not just by accident, but inherently and inevitably. Hence the Marxists believed, like their conservative brethren, that you might as well just tough it out.

Keynes (at least via Minsky) does seem to have shared the Marxist belief that instability in capitalism was substance, not acciddent. But he believed is was worthy trying to do something about it. In this he differed from conservatives and Marxists alike.

Update: Don't miss Tom's (Doug Henwood's) (Marx's) contribution in the comments.

WTF? Greg Mankiw Department

In a comment on Barack Obama, Greg Mankiw, hugely popular and successful econ prof--and gold medalist in the "running dogs of the oligarchy" sweepstakes--offers this exremely odd bit of snark:

The sloppiest sentence so far [in Obama's Audacity of Hope] (page 146):

Over the past decade, we've seen...hefty corporate profits, but a shrinking share of those profits going to workers.

I am pretty sure that the share of profits going to workers has been stable--at zero. Profits are what owners get to keep after workers have been paid.

WTF? Is Mr. Free Market conceding that owners walk off with all the rents, while working stiffs have to slug it out at marginal cost? Is there a dog-eared copy of Ricardo tucked under his pillow? Of Marx?

Or, come to think of it, is he conceding that labor unions offer absolutely no obstacle to owner's attempt to walk off with all the swag?