Lovely tv programme about Marx this evening - and how his analysis of capitalism was proving to be correct (No!! Really? Who's surprised? Non-marxists obviously) - which justifies us all going round saying "Comrades, capitalism is in crisis" - as we have been since 2008. (Well, it was probably in crisis at the time of the Japanese Banking crisis in the 80's, and has been a bit hollow since then). But the programme made a lot of points which glossed over things, for example it said that capitalism was strong and successful in the years after the Second World War - but failed to point out that in Europe a lot of capitalism formed part of a mixed economy, where there were financial controls, state-owned industries and wage councils and other such factors which prevented capitalism from becoming rampant. Most of the problems we now have date from the Thatcher - Regan era of FreeMarketeering - the ending of exchange controls, the increase of globalisation, businesses moving offshore to lower wage economies etc. (the US car industry going to Mexico for example - think that's correct?). The final evidence of this came today when on the news it was annnounced that "Britain's biggest companies, the food retailers...." - for God's sake - what sort of country has food retailers as its biggest private sector employers? How is that country making a living exactly - on the profit margin it makes whenever the customer buys the more lavishly packaged oven chips?
I watched it with Ned - who has an almost visceral hatred of Peter Hitchens - who for some reason (he's not an economist or much of an economic thinker as far as I know) was asked to make some rather inane comments (a task he rose to magnificently). I have a similar visceral response to Nigel Lawson who was also on, being very smug and dishonest as usual (is this where Nigella gets it from?) but at least, being an economist and former Chancellor of the Exchequer he had a right to be there...
It seemed quite an appropriate programme to have on tv the day Hobsbawm died - it is true that I never read any of his books - because, well, because I have only studied modern history (i.e the Nineteenth Century) at a very low level - O-level to be precise, but it was always comforting to have a Big Socialist Historian occasionally putting in his Marxist oar in public debates... I'm afraid Tristram Hunt won't be an adequate substitute. On the other hand, he was a notorious "tankie" - a man who remained in the Communist Party after Hungary in 1956 and Czecheslovakia in 1968... if it was only out of sentiment, why did he attach so much importance to sentiment? It's a bit like saying I should have remained a Catholic out of sentiment, even when I totally disagreed with Papal Authority.
For years there were 2 Big Socialist Historians (apologies to the others) - Hobsbawn and EP Thompson - EP Thompson was a "goodie" since he was not a tankie and had written a book we'd all read about the British Working Class and was thus a Good Thing... he used to debate with Hobsbawm - in the days when I was more interested in that sort of thing, and I usually found myself agreeing with EPT - but off the top of my head, I cannot say what these debates - usually conducted in TLS/LRB and other worthy journals, were about.
The conclusion of the Marxist programme on tv was the well known fact that while providing an analysis of capitalism Marx had completely failed to suggest an alternative (how very dare he!!??). So he wasn't much use after all. I think it's a bit unfair to have expected him to find the solution as well as analyse the problem - not all analytical people are creative after all... and vice versa. I cannot see any way of currently dismantling capitalism - but I think we should urgently find ways of harnessing it to benefit the proletariat to enable us to enjoy its apparent benefits, without oppressing others. Sadly, the global nature of the beast will make this increasingly hard to do. It is my suspicion though that perhaps the world is beginning to "run out of money" - and that we are living through a period in which capitalism is severely sickened - even the expanding economies of China and India cannot continue to grow at ludicrous rates if all their customers are too poor to buy their stuff. It will not surprise me if we are now in the beginning of a period of long term economic adjustment to the new realities that globalisation has brought about, which may see "the West" losing economic power rather faster than we had anticipated. Never mind peak oil - there's peak tungsten, peak bauxite, peak coltan and a few other ingredients of economic growth to worry about. .
I watched it with Ned - who has an almost visceral hatred of Peter Hitchens - who for some reason (he's not an economist or much of an economic thinker as far as I know) was asked to make some rather inane comments (a task he rose to magnificently). I have a similar visceral response to Nigel Lawson who was also on, being very smug and dishonest as usual (is this where Nigella gets it from?) but at least, being an economist and former Chancellor of the Exchequer he had a right to be there...
It seemed quite an appropriate programme to have on tv the day Hobsbawm died - it is true that I never read any of his books - because, well, because I have only studied modern history (i.e the Nineteenth Century) at a very low level - O-level to be precise, but it was always comforting to have a Big Socialist Historian occasionally putting in his Marxist oar in public debates... I'm afraid Tristram Hunt won't be an adequate substitute. On the other hand, he was a notorious "tankie" - a man who remained in the Communist Party after Hungary in 1956 and Czecheslovakia in 1968... if it was only out of sentiment, why did he attach so much importance to sentiment? It's a bit like saying I should have remained a Catholic out of sentiment, even when I totally disagreed with Papal Authority.
For years there were 2 Big Socialist Historians (apologies to the others) - Hobsbawn and EP Thompson - EP Thompson was a "goodie" since he was not a tankie and had written a book we'd all read about the British Working Class and was thus a Good Thing... he used to debate with Hobsbawm - in the days when I was more interested in that sort of thing, and I usually found myself agreeing with EPT - but off the top of my head, I cannot say what these debates - usually conducted in TLS/LRB and other worthy journals, were about.
The conclusion of the Marxist programme on tv was the well known fact that while providing an analysis of capitalism Marx had completely failed to suggest an alternative (how very dare he!!??). So he wasn't much use after all. I think it's a bit unfair to have expected him to find the solution as well as analyse the problem - not all analytical people are creative after all... and vice versa. I cannot see any way of currently dismantling capitalism - but I think we should urgently find ways of harnessing it to benefit the proletariat to enable us to enjoy its apparent benefits, without oppressing others. Sadly, the global nature of the beast will make this increasingly hard to do. It is my suspicion though that perhaps the world is beginning to "run out of money" - and that we are living through a period in which capitalism is severely sickened - even the expanding economies of China and India cannot continue to grow at ludicrous rates if all their customers are too poor to buy their stuff. It will not surprise me if we are now in the beginning of a period of long term economic adjustment to the new realities that globalisation has brought about, which may see "the West" losing economic power rather faster than we had anticipated. Never mind peak oil - there's peak tungsten, peak bauxite, peak coltan and a few other ingredients of economic growth to worry about. .
Thanks for reading!
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