03-26-2021, 11:09 PM
As I have understood Marx, he saw the last stage of human history as Communism (not to be confused with Communist parties) in which technology, morals, and good government would banish scarcity from human existence. He saw capitalism as too slow because an inordinate share of income would go to owners who would fritter away the profits on crass indulgence -- castles, palaces, harems, and financial scams. Socialism would take out the entrepreneurs whose power, indulgence, and gain are the purpose of a capitalist order. Socialism would bring democracy to the economic order.
So whom do you trust as stewards of the economic resources -- tycoons or working-class voters? The usual capitalist (is bourgeoisie an even greater insult than "m---rf---er" in your lexicon?) argument is that ownership and management of assets is too complicated to be done by politicians. Well, I certainly would not trust any combination of President and Congress to manage the productive part of the economy. A central planning board responsible to the elected officials? Bureaucracies of any kind almost never innovate, and they are rarely efficient. I can tell you about a thoroughly-capitalist community that has no bureaucracy, is quite efficient in stewardship of assets, and gets surprisingly good (by American standards) of social equality. It has no Big Business or joint-stock companies, and crony capitalism is not its way of doing things. I will leave you guessing on who they are.
I have my theory on why giant capitalist enterprises get bloated bureaucracies. Remember well that capitalism is not a suicide pact for capitalists. The tycoons well know what awaits them after the Socialist Revolution.
It may seem a digression, but most societies end up with far more smart people than they really need to do the brain work necessary for meeting basic needs (like medicine and dentistry), engineering and design, accounting, law, research science, creative work, and teaching. The average IQ in America is 100, and that is well below the genius level. Most end up as bureaucrats. They can shuffle papers all day and think that they are productive; they are happy because they are being paid better than raw laborers (who mostly have IQ's in the low-normal range). They have Buicks, top-end Hondas, and Chryslers of recent vintage instead of the decrepit jalopies that honest-to-proletariat workers are able to get at some tote-the-note lot and live in a single-family house in any place other than some megalopolis with constricted space (like greater New York City), and get top-notch television as opposed to the schlock that the proles watch.
So why do the plutocrats have the bureaucrats? It looks good... and remember what smart people struggling for survival in an economic order that more blatantly has no need for them might do. They might study Marx, Engels, Lenin, and whatever intellectual successors they choose (Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, Hoxha, Tito, Castro, Pol Pot...) for hints on how to make an appeal to people terribly underpaid and overworked. You know, as the late Tennessee Ernie Ford sang
(You dig Sixteen Tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt!)
in a promise of an order that treats them well.
So whom do you trust as stewards of the economic resources -- tycoons or working-class voters? The usual capitalist (is bourgeoisie an even greater insult than "m---rf---er" in your lexicon?) argument is that ownership and management of assets is too complicated to be done by politicians. Well, I certainly would not trust any combination of President and Congress to manage the productive part of the economy. A central planning board responsible to the elected officials? Bureaucracies of any kind almost never innovate, and they are rarely efficient. I can tell you about a thoroughly-capitalist community that has no bureaucracy, is quite efficient in stewardship of assets, and gets surprisingly good (by American standards) of social equality. It has no Big Business or joint-stock companies, and crony capitalism is not its way of doing things. I will leave you guessing on who they are.
I have my theory on why giant capitalist enterprises get bloated bureaucracies. Remember well that capitalism is not a suicide pact for capitalists. The tycoons well know what awaits them after the Socialist Revolution.
It may seem a digression, but most societies end up with far more smart people than they really need to do the brain work necessary for meeting basic needs (like medicine and dentistry), engineering and design, accounting, law, research science, creative work, and teaching. The average IQ in America is 100, and that is well below the genius level. Most end up as bureaucrats. They can shuffle papers all day and think that they are productive; they are happy because they are being paid better than raw laborers (who mostly have IQ's in the low-normal range). They have Buicks, top-end Hondas, and Chryslers of recent vintage instead of the decrepit jalopies that honest-to-proletariat workers are able to get at some tote-the-note lot and live in a single-family house in any place other than some megalopolis with constricted space (like greater New York City), and get top-notch television as opposed to the schlock that the proles watch.
So why do the plutocrats have the bureaucrats? It looks good... and remember what smart people struggling for survival in an economic order that more blatantly has no need for them might do. They might study Marx, Engels, Lenin, and whatever intellectual successors they choose (Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, Hoxha, Tito, Castro, Pol Pot...) for hints on how to make an appeal to people terribly underpaid and overworked. You know, as the late Tennessee Ernie Ford sang
(You dig Sixteen Tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt!)
in a promise of an order that treats them well.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.