PeterFrank
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Totally agree. They are like all orthodox followers of an ideology – they believe it’s a science and therefore have all the arrogance and hubris that comes with that black and white perception of the world. They are, in short, little men and women who believe they are giants.
Nonetheless, it’s a useful paradigm to introduce capitalism on its own terms and show how it fails.
You are correct, they are pro-capitalism and anti-socialist and anti-communist. I am in email threads with them, arguing for socialism and also arguing for using Henry George as a first step towards learning about the role of private property in the immiseration of the planet. I know Marx and Engels understood George. Like I said earlier, I’m not advocating George as an ends. I believe he is useful in unraveling how profits are made in capitalism so that when presenting socialism to people in the general public, they have something to grab onto and use as a reference.
People who don’t try to talk to the general public are free to be orthodox purist and live a pristine lifestyle. If, however, one chooses to go outside one’s comfort zone and speak to people whose default position is mainstream, then you will find that you need conversational tools to peak their curiosity and enable them to feel that they have derived the conclusion that socialism is the logical choice.
I agree with you 100%. I bring up George and Gesell not because I think they are solutions, but rather to mark the spot were private property begins to encroach on the lives of all in society; to show where the zero sum relationship that private property has with society plants itself. They are the beginning of the critique of capitalism not the end.
Awesome. The other important political economist that needs to have some input into things is the 19th century American economist Henry George. Together, George and Gesell show us how the mechanics of wealth extraction occur in capitalism, apart from the conventional idea of exploitation of labor.
Hi. Just thought I’d say that the money-form that cannot be a store of value is Silvio Gesell’s freigeld. It’s created by the municipality and has a shelf life beyond which the money becomes worthless. Spend it or lose it. The town of Wörgl, Austria used freigeld to reverse the devastation of the Great Depresson. It worked. Full stop. Other towns from Austria and neighboring countries wanted to create their own local currencies. By the end of the year, the central bank of Austria forced the government to shut down the freigeld experiment. The town instantly reverted to its former impoverished condition. The economist Bernard Lietaer based his work on Gesell’s freigeld.
