Some would argue that Karl Marx, author of “Das Kapital,” has been proven wrong on just about everything he wrote. The founder of scientific socialism was born 200 years ago on May 5.

These naysayers would point out that Soviet socialism imploded decades ago, and that China is heading merrily down the capitalist path. Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels wrote in “The Communist Manifesto” that the capitalist ruling class “produced its own grave-diggers” in the proletariat – that is, the working class. However, we have yet to see workers pick up the shovel and bury capitalism once and for all.

Activists seeking to combat injustice and inequality, it can be argued, have turned not to class struggle but to social movements focused on gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity and the environment. “Intersectionality” – the notion that people are defined by multiple identities, where class is just one among many – would seem to have a lot more appeal today than the effort to end “exploitation.” 

However, as a scholar of Marxist theory and practice, I find that such announcements of the death of Marxism are premature. 

In the wake of World War II, various economists heralded the narrowing of the gap between the richest and the poorest as evidence of the disappearance of class antagonisms. 

But the long curve of capitalist development suggests that has widened, as illustrated in economist Thomas Piketty’s book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century.”

The candle of the 2012 Occupy movement may have guttered, but its mantra of the 99 percent opposing the 1 percent is now a truiusm. Everyone knows that the super-rich are richer than ever, while for most of the working-class majority – many of them caught in the uncertainty of the “gig economy” – belt-tightening has become the new normal.

Those laboring in the formal and informal economies of much of Asia, Africa and Latin America, needless to say, face conditions that are far more dire. 

Marx was correct, it would seem, when he wrote that capitalism keeps the working class poor.

He was also spot-on about capital’s inherent instability. There is some validity to the joke that “Marxists have predicted correctly 12 of the last three financial crises.” 

Marx’s reputation has made a startling comeback, however, at times in unexpected circles.

In discussing the 2008 financial meltdown, one Wall Street Journal commentator wrote: “Karl Marx got it right, at some point capitalism can destroy itself. We thought markets worked. They’re not working.”

In 2017, the National Review reported that a poll found as many as 40 percent of people in the U.S. “now prefer socialism to capitalism.”

Read more:

https://theconversation.com/should-we-celebrate-karl-marx-on-his-200th-b...

See also:

"The only thing that sustains capitalism in its present form is war..."

                                    Rogieri Blatanto

Gus: apologies. My two graphic computers have died and until I get them fixed, I cannot produce new cartoons, so I recycle old ones, though I could actually draw them, colour them the old fashion way and scan... May be soon. Too busy having a good time. 

...

In contrast with Labor, Mr Turnbull and his ministers face tough decisions about policy and approach.

Labor's line "stop giving big banks a tax cut, and start funding our schools and hospitals" resonates. So if, as expected, the Senate remains opposed to those company tax cuts in the spring session, does Mr Turnbull take them to the election, or dump them?

The obvious answer might seem, jettison them. But whether that's the best answer is more complex. 

After more than two years of spruiking them as vital, it would make Mr Turnbull look (to borrow an Abbottism) the ultra weather vane. And the voters wouldn't necessarily be convinced — Labor would say, "he'll bring them back after the election".

Asked whether the Government's policies needed to change, Mr Turnbull said yesterday: "We will look very seriously and thoughtfully and humbly at the way in which the voters have responded" while also saying by-elections "have special characteristics". 

As to whether he'd take the company tax cuts to the election if necessary, Mr Turnbull said: "We are committed to ensuring Australia has a competitive company tax rate".

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-30/malcolm-turnbull-authority-diminis...

"Competitittitititititive blah blah blah"...Sweet words hiding a ruthless class warfare behind the bushes... read from top. 

The Tories and their billionaire backers and lickspittles in the mainstream media rarely mention the ‘class war’ because they are too busy executing it.

Tony ‘war criminal’ Blair used to pontificate to all and sundry that talk of class war was irrelevant in the 21st century as a society had moved on and it was wrong to use such antagonistic phrases any longer. The “class war is over” declared the born again ‘Tory Blair’ in September 1999. What utter tosh. I remember rising to ask one of Blair’s enthusiastic acolytes in the Scottish Parliament, First Minister Donald Dewar, if he was an adherent to Blair’s proclamation about the death of the class war and if so ‘who won’? Mr Dewar stumbled and mumbled but as usual avoided the question while backing his New Labour Messiah.

The class war is far from over and the introduction of ‘austerity’ by the Tory/Liberal coalition Government elected in 2010 on the back of the bankers crash of 2008 was just another name for the explicit conduct of class war by the rich for the rich. Rich and greedy bankers, shamefully de-regulated by Blair’s New Labour Governments, where up to their necks in irresponsible and illegal financial deals and transactions which eventually erupted in the Lehman Brothers crash in 2008 which exposed the empty re-payment promises as the fiction they were and led to a catastrophic banking crash.

READ MORE: Never Cross a Picket Line – Don’t Be a Scab

The response of former ‘socialists’, Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Chancellor Alastair Darling, was not to signal to the world that the fraud and fragility which underpins the so-called ‘free-market’ economy was finally exposed for all to see and set about reversing the years of tax cuts for the rich and deregulation of the finance markets and labour market. No, these Blairites decided to declare their loyalty to the millionaires first and foremost by bailing out the rich and fraudulent bankers to the tune of trillions of taxpayers pounds.

For years workers in the coal, steel, shipbuilding and motor industries had been lectured about the iron laws of the market and how ‘subsidies’ and ‘bailouts’ were unacceptable and evidence of a deep malaise in those industries that only collapse could remedy. Hundreds of thousands in the boiler suits and hard hats of the mines, steel mills, shipyards and car factories of the UK were left to rot when they ran into economic problems but not so for the sharp-suited spivs and charlatans in the banking industry. Incredible sums of public money were poured into save the banks and the bankers on their obscene salaries and shameless bonuses. Almost £1.2 trillion was found by a New Labour Government which had preached wage restraint to low paid nurses, carers, street cleaners and other public servants for years and foisted the economic lunacy of Private Finance Initiatives (PFI — Paying For Infinity) upon us to build new schools and hospitals and roads because we ‘couldn’t afford’ traditional, and much more economically sane, forms of public investment.

READ MORE: Over 100,000 March in Edinburgh — There is an Appetite for Indyref2

Like magicians on a stage Brown and Darling found £1.029 trillion in non-cash Asset Protection, Credit Guarantee and Special Liquidity Schemes and £133 billion in cash loans to failed banks like Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds, Northern Rock and others. The real class nature of politics was laid bare for all to see. There was no money to save coalmines, shipyards or steel mills. There was no money to publicly build new schools, hospitals and roads. There was no money to improve the wages of low paid public service workers or essential service workers like the Fire Fighters. But as soon as the bankers went bankrupt the money was found in spades to bail them out. Within a year these economic parasites in the finance sector were sticking their middle fingers up to the foolish masses as bonuses and salaries of £billions returned and even arch Tory papers like the Telegraph had to admit:

“It is hard not to conclude that the bankers have somehow "got away with it". Unapologetically, although far more discreetly than at the height of the boom, they are making millions again.” 

Those bankers should have been criminally prosecuted and jailed not rescued and allowed to resume their lives of luxury.

To pay for the bailout of the banks and the bankers the Tory/Liberal coalition Government decided in 2010 to punish those who were completely blameless in the economic crash. For the mistakes and greed of the bankers the Blue and Yellow Tories determined that already poor people on benefits, low paid council workers, hospital porters and carers in old folks homes should pay for the banker’s bailout through benefit cuts, wage freezes and local authority budget reductions resulting in thousands of job losses and local service provision being cut back to the bone. They called it ‘austerity’ and got their puppets in the press and media to punt the narrative that it was the ‘only alternative’ and it was everyone’s patriotic duty to ‘tighten their belts’ and accept the necessary medicine. It was the actions of class war under the guise of ‘pulling together’ for the greater good.

READ MORE: It’s Not My Flag Mate. Never Has Been and Never Will Be

The result has been yet more transfer of wealth and privileges, from the working classes to the upper classes. The use of fancy phrases and clever terms should not be allowed to confuse us. The Thatcherite policies of the 1980’s were naked class war. The Blairite policies of the late 1990’s and early 21st century were also Thatcherite but dressed as lamb while the Cameron and May Governments have continued the assault on ordinary living standards under the pathetic ruse of ‘all in it together’ austerity. Remember the sermons about the necessity to reduce the public debt? That’s why austerity was necessary we were told. Yet the £823.3 billion net debt of 2010 has not been reduced but grown to £1.781.9 trillion today. The UK debt burden has increased from 56% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2010 to 84% of GDP now.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/columnists/201810221069091657-austerity-fancy-na...