Comments on: Five years on

By: Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay

Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 01:05:21 +0000

Standard Chartered India is branded as an “ethical fraud”, when they have established a relationship (rather a ‘collusion’ a la Adam Smith) with Bajaj Allianz Insurance Co. Miss-selling of insurance cum investment products with covert high allocation charges (none knows the utilization of such charges. Consumers are suffering and the Banker is sleeping and enjoying merry trip to foreign countries). They are also lacking transparency by issuing a brochure instead of policy bond thus infringing the RTI. All these products are sold with gentle managerial tricks so that the consumer does not understand the hidden charges. They are, therefore, de jure ethical fraud.

By: Philip Ferguson

Philip Ferguson — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 23:38:40 +0000

Cheers, mate. Btw, I think this is an excellent blog. I’m involved in a small independent Marxist blog in New Zealand (Redline) and we reprint some of your material there, with links to the original. So much left economics is warmed-over Keynesianism with a bit of militant political rhetoric thrown in, so your blog is a breath of fresh air. People like yourself, Andrew Kliman, Tony Norfield, Brendan Clooney and just a few others are doing excellent work.

All the best,
Phil

By: michael roberts

michael roberts — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 22:27:49 +0000

Philip
You are right. It is a little ambiguous. Sometimes a quick blog post is not perfectly phrased. You are dead right about what I meant.

By: Philip Ferguson

Philip Ferguson — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 21:04:55 +0000

Michael, since you’re a Marxist I assume you oppose the sanctions on Iran, so the one thing I didn’t get about your article is that the way you’ve written it makes it sound as if you support the sanctions and oppose Western banks breaking them.

I’m assuming that you simply meant this bank which presents itself as upholding bourgeois law is busily involved in breaking it. But by quoting the stuff about terrorists and so on and not commenting on it, it comes across as if you are endorsing this position. This, in turn, does detract from the rest of the article.

Philip Ferguson

By: Peter Dwyer

Peter Dwyer — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 15:34:57 +0000

Hi Michael,thanks for sharing this with us. I teach a module that I inherited on Radical Political Economy and I teach it to mature working class students with little or no educational qualifications. Would you suggest this book might still be a useful introduction to key political economists?

By: BenP

BenP — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 17:46:26 +0000

I don’t think there is evidence of absolute immeseration in western countries. Ultimately wages are determined in the class struggle. Unionisation and democratic forces such as minimum wage policies keep this well above cost of production and this is unlikely to change in the short term, Andrew Kliman’s latest book for example shows there has not been a big impact on average renumeration, particularly when state benefits, etc are included.

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 23:34:48 +0000

Keynesians (such as for example Brad De Long) have always specifically argued against Marx’s thesis of the absolute immiseration of the proletariat as “not in accordance with the actual historical results”. This is largely a fallacy of composition: because living standards appear to be rising for a minority of workers in a given country – something quite possible depending on the tempo of accumulation – they are assumed to be rising for all workers in all countries.

In fact historically this was true for a select few *imperialist* countries, but is due to imperialism, not capitalism. And if imperialism should coincide with a rapid pace of accumulation, as in the post war US, it could be true for a majority of workers in that country, as well as for a time in Western Europe and Japan.

Now the shoe is on the other foot with the weakening of the structures of post war imperialism, mainly because they are no longer congruent with capitalist accumulation. Now we see a minority of workers benefit in, say, the BRIC countries, while absolute immiseration manifests itself (once again) in the old imperialist core.

By: Charles Andrews

Charles Andrews — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 20:52:59 +0000

Which sector of the economy is the poster child for venture capital, wildly successful new corporations started in garages by young men from middle-income families, and amazing new products?

Which sector of the economy subcontracts most of the labor required to produce its stuff to the cheapest sweatshops while reserving piles of superprofit based on “intellectual property” monopoly for a handful at the very top?

Which sector of the economy has enabled other sectors to eliminate vast ranks of middle-income jobs, furthermore showing that no sector of capitalism today creates plentiful numbers of new middle-income jobs?

Three questions with the same answer.

By: ologuro

ologuro — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 20:50:25 +0000

d writer gets it wrong by claiming a man through initiative may access to capital.does dis end poverty overall in d society?a dog-eat-dog system it is.minority interest over dt of d majority

By: Mike Ballard

Mike Ballard — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 10:02:39 +0000

“Social need” translates as, “poor people who can’t afford commodities”. The democratization of the wage system is as much an illusion as a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work. Exploitation of varying intensity is built into the ‘animal spirits’ who run our lives because they own and control the wealth we make for them in exchange for wages.