Former Reagan Administration Official Reconsiders Marx & Lenin

[Rakhmetov]

Marx predicted the growing misery of working people, and Lenin foresaw the subordination of the production of goods to financial capital’s accumulation of profits based on the purchase and sale of paper instruments. Their predictions are far superior to the “risk models” for which the Nobel Prize has been given and are closer to the money than the predictions of Federal Reserve chairmen, US Treasury secretaries, and Nobel economists, such as Paul Krugman, who believe that more credit and more debt are the solution to the economic crisis.

http://www.counterpunch.com/roberts10072009.html

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: [email protected]





http://www.counterpunch.com/roberts10072009.html

[cyu]

http://www.counterpunch.com/roberts10072009.html (http://www.counterpunch.com/roberts10072009.html)

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration.


Good stuff:

If Karl Marx and V. I. Lenin were alive today, they would be leading contenders for the Nobel Prize in economics.

This process by which financial capital destroyed the job prospects of Americans was covered up by “free market” economists, who received grants from offshoring firms in exchange for propaganda that Americans would benefit from a “New Economy” based on financial services

In Marx’s day, religion was the opiate of the masses. Today the media is. Let’s look at media reporting that facilitates the financial oligarchy’s ability to delude the people.

The financial oligarchy is hyping a recovery while American unemployment and home foreclosures are rising.

What is happening is that the hundreds of billions of dollars in TARP money given to the large banks and the trillions of dollars that have been added to the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet have been funneled into the stock market, producing another bubble, and into the acquisition of smaller banks by banks “too large to fail.” The result is more financial concentration.

[RadioRaheem84]

I wish it went into more why Marx and Lenin were right. Anyone care to elaborate?

[Mather]

I wish it went into more why Marx and Lenin were right. Anyone care to elaborate?


Well I would guess that one of Marx's theories about the decay of capaitalism is now a big feature in contemporary (ie; neo-liberal global) capitalism, that is the concentration of capital into ever more narrow bits and the merger of banks to create a few financial cartels/monopolies. The financial sector has grown in size and value in terms of total economic activity, yet there are now less banks and institutions running it.

Marx wrote a bit on this concentration of capital as capitalism decays.

[Die Neue Zeit]

This particular Reagan official has been the most vocal one on Marx, Lenin, and the Soviet economy. I've read other articles of his, too.

[La Comédie Noire]

I read this article earlier and liked it a lot. People are seeing a system they had every reason to believe was free, acting in a despotic manner and it confuses them. We've had the formula shoved down our throats for so long "Free Market = Free & Fair Competition!" When in reality the system acts like nothing of the sort and that always starts to show during times of crisis.


Paul Craig Roberts is the polar opposite of that dreadful Richard Pipes whose main thesis for an entire century of Russian History equates to "Lenin was evil LOL!!!"

[Andy Bowden]

Paul Craig Roberts is simultaneously very dodgy and very interesting at the same time. Dodgy because his politics come from the right - support for Pinochet, antisemitism - but interesting because he articulates criticisms of Bush, Obama etc from a conservative perspective.

[Rakhmetov]

Paul Craig Roberts is simultaneously very dodgy and very interesting at the same time. Dodgy because his politics come from the right - support for Pinochet, antisemitism - but interesting because he articulates criticisms of Bush, Obama etc from a conservative perspective.

Nobody's perfect. In times like these we'll welcome criticisms from whatever quarter we can get them.

[RadioRaheem84]

He might be one of those anti-free trade, economic nationalist Buchanan-nite conservatives?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Nah. Buchananites don't like Marx or Lenin very much. It seems that Roberts is an unorthodox paleo-con of some sort.