Australian economist John Quiggan (“Commentary on Australian & world events from a social-democratic perspective”) has written the first of three blogs about the Marxist themes of Class, Capital and Crisis: Marxism without revolution: Class
extract:
And for now, the ruling 1 per cent has managed to turn the anger generated by their failures to their own political advantage. But, far more than in the 1980s and 1990s, or even the first decade of the 2000s, the opening is there for a radical alternative. Even within the dominant class, faith in the beneficience of markets in general and financial markets in particular, has largely dissipated. What remains is a grimly determined class view that “what we have we hold”
The comment #19 by Lora on the Quiggan thread is worth reading
Cynical response to Quiggan’s initiative at Club Troppo: What working class?.
This link (to directionless bones blog) contained an interesting summary of Jerry Cohen’s if You’re an Egalitarian How Come you’re so Rich. The link worked last but is just spinning its wheels today. Jerry Cohen may be worth reading.
The Winter Palace, and after (from 2005)
More Quiggan. Why he is against revolution, Lenin and the Iraq war. Read the discussion thread, Slocum, pro Iraq war, takes on all comers and wins the discussion.
Thanks for the links.
Seems like significantly more willingness to argue. Even though they repeat the same tripe, they don’t seem as inclined to simply not bother debating as they used to be. There might be scope for us to have an impact if we tried. Could be important eg on Afghanistan.
Who is slocum?
Marxism without revolution: Crisis
Part 2 of John Quiggan’s series. This one is easier for me to comment on than his Class article, but I’ve only had a quick read so far and have yet to look at the comments there.
Marxism without revolution: Class, oops Capital
Part 3 of John Quiggin’s series is now posted. The third one is about Capital but he gave it the wrong title, calling it Class instead, which is the subject of his earlier first post. He said he has read David Harvey but Quiggin’s critique of Marx in parts 2 and 3 is pre-Harvey, since Harvey has a far more sophisticated analysis of Marx than the one Quiggin is critiquing.
It’s all a bit disappointing really. It’s as though I could write a critique of Quiggan’s Zombie Economics without studying it but because I had studied some other alleged Keynesian analysis irrespective of whether the ideas in both of them actually coincided.
So, we have the sad spectacle of people who appear to be intelligent in some ways critiquing Marx without having studied him thoroughly and somehow believing they understand him. Ok, I get it, what else is new?
John Quiggan writes about the top 1% of US society but what about that other 1%
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD5TanQT3p8&feature=related