George Osborne speech

[jondwhite]

George Osborne attacked 'Marxism' the other day.

Is this worth an open letter from the SPGB?

Quote:

…I share none of the pessimism I saw from the Leader of the Opposition last week.

For him the global free market equates to a race to the bottom with the gains being shared among a smaller and smaller group of people.

That is essentially the argument Karl Marx made in Das Kapital. It is what socialists have always believed.

But the irony is this: It is socialism that always brings it about. And it is the historic work of this Party to put that right.

Because attempts to fix prices and confiscate wealth crush endeavour and blunt aspiration. And the people who suffer are not the rich, but the hundreds of thousands put out of work….

[SocialistPunk]

What on earth is that idiot Osborne on about? He needs an open letter shoved right up his arse.

[ALB]

jondwhite wrote:

George Osborne attacked 'Marxism' the other day.

Quote:

…I share none of the pessimism I saw from the Leader of the Opposition last week.For him the global free market equates to a race to the bottom with the gains being shared among a smaller and smaller group of people.That is essentially the argument Karl Marx made in Das Kapital. It is what socialists have always believed

I missed that but have found it here.Here is what Marx said on free trade, not in Capital, but in a talk on the subject he gave in Brussels in 1848 to a meeting of bourgeois democrats:

Quote:

What influence will the adoption of free trade have upon the condition of the working class? All the laws formulated by the political economists from Quesnay to Ricardo have been based upon the hypothesis that the trammels which still interfere with commercial freedom have disappeared. These laws are confirmed in proportion as free trade is adopted. The first of these laws is that competition reduces the price of every commodity to the minimum cost of production. Thus the minimum of wages is the natural price of labor. And what is the minimum of wages? Just so much as is required for production of the articles indispensable for the maintenance of the worker, for putting him in a position to sustain himself, however badly, and to propagate his race, however slightly.But do not imagine that the worker receives only this minimum wage, and still less that he always receives it.No, according to this law, the working class will sometimes be more fortunate. It will sometimes receive something above the minimum, but this surplus will merely make up for the deficit which it will have received below the minimum in times of industrial stagnation. That is to say that, within a given time which recurs periodically, in the cycle which industry passes through while undergoing the vicissitudes of prosperity, overproduction, stagnation and crisis, when reckoning all that the working class will have had above and below necessaries, we shall see that, in all, it will have received neither more nor less than the minimum; i.e., the working class will have maintained itself as a class after enduring any amount of misery and misfortune, and after leaving many corpses upon the industrial battlefield. But what of that? The class will still exist; nay, more, it will have increased.

He concluded his talk:

Quote:

But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade.

I don't see what this has to do with the Labour Party. Given what people can see the Labour Party is, I can't see the Tories getting away with labelling it as "Marxist". Everybody knows that's nonsense. Still it's good to see that Marx's ideas are still being discussed.

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