Marx makes front page of Foreign Policy Magazine

One of my favorite magazines, Foreign Policy, has me agitated over their recent cover story- “Marx Really? Why he matters now.” I read through, with much consternation, the articles “Thoroughly Modern Marx” by Leo Panitch and “Confessions of a True Believer” by John B. Judis.

Two things struck me like a sickle and hammer when reading these articles: 1) The irony that the articles were ordered to follow right after an article praising the healthy growth of Angola, where free enterprise is beginning to be embraced. And 2) Since the argument for the Marx articles was that sales of Das Kapital have increased of late, will we see a follow up article about Ayn Rand, objectivism, and the booming sales of Atlas Shrugged? Rand's book recently passed the President's book, Audacity of Hope, on the Amazon best-seller list, and sold over 200,000 copies last year. Talk about resurgence.

The articles merit a serious examination. Upon said examination, many flaws in the theory of Marx reveal why Das Kapital was put to rest.

“Confessions of a True Believer”
An admitted, “true believer, ”John B. Judis' efforts are admirable, but truly confused. His confusion is evident in the fluid transitions he makes between free market being to blame because of government policies. They are not one in the same. Any mention of government policies automatically disqualifies the problem from being a free market problem. How can a bad government policy or regulation mean that the “free market” does not work or is to blame? Unfortunately, Judis and many of our leaders and intellectual types today fail to make that distinction. For example, Judis admonishes “regulatory bodies” and “corporate lobbies.” There may be room for “regulatory bodies,” or “corporate lobbies in a mixed economy, but not in a free-market capitalistic economy.

According to Judis, we must have experienced unfettered capitalism in recent years because of George W Bush's “blind faith in free markets.” Are you kidding me? George may have indeed been blind to free markets, but he certainly was no defender of capitalism. In rhetoric, perhaps; in action, hardly. Bush gladly took part in this anti-capitalism business of bailing out failed banks.

The confusion continues when Judis suggests that the “America of the New Deal” was somehow grossly different than “the America of Herbert Hoover,” despite the policies of the New Deal being a continuation and expansion of Hoover's policies. The socialists love to assign free market credentials to Hoover. No capitalist would assign free market credentials to Hoover, especially since he hardly followed a free market philosophy.

In case you're not convinced by those examples, Judis quotes France's President Nicolas Sarkozy who recently announced that “laissez-faire is finished.” That may be true, and expected in France, but far from it in the U S of A. Hardly a telling blow to capitalism when you call forth a quote from the 'commissar' of France. Surprise, surprise, France is calling for the end of free markets.

One thing Judis does accurately describe is that the U.S. “public sector also has significant control over how industry functions and how wealth and income are distributed.” Are these attributes that one would associate with free market capitalism, or does this sound more like fascism? In the mind of Judis, there is no difference between government policies that are to his full content, and capitalism. It goes to show how far, clearly, we are from having a true capitalist economic system.

Thoroughly Modern Marx
Leo Panitch, coeditor of the Socialist Register, lays out the Marxist case for driving our economy further into darkness with Marx's works in Das Kapital as the guiding light. How does he present his case? By insisting that, were Marx here today, he would “relish pointing out how flaws inherent in capitalism led to the current [financial] crisis.” It takes a crisis to make Marxism more attractive—when times are good, few people would turn the pages of this demoralizing and drab text. The debate on the supposed flaws of capitalism has yet to be resolved, but there are plenty of free-market defenders who will show you, and Panitch, how the crisis was brought about not by free-markets, but government intervention into those markets. Panitch insisted that the free market system “produced a series of inevitable financial bubbles,” but fails to tell us why those bubbles are “inevitable.” But economist Thomas Wood's recent book, Meltdown, explains how the financial crisis was actually the result of cheap money policy of the Federal Reserve and loose government spending. Far from free markets. I doubt Panitch has read this book.

Like Judis, Panitch is critical of government plans that he disapproves of, and substitutes blame on the state for blame on free markets. Panitch labels President Obama's carbon credit trades and the Kyoto Protocol as irrationalities. I beg your parden, Panitch, but allow me to point out that anything Obama and anything Kyoto are government policies, pure and simple. President Obama's policy proposal merely shows how interwoven government is in the economy. More importantly, ask yourself, how can the “free market” be blamed for poor government policy and action? The solution, is to “democratize our economies,” suggests Panitch. What exactly does that mean? Would every person be entitled to vote an any and all activity taking place in our diverse economy? Panitch suggests that democratizing our economy would undo the catalyst for the crisis, and that is a “culture of risk disassociated with consequence.” Ask any business owner if that is how they run their operation. There is plenty of consequence in today's modern, industrialized world. Namely, profit and loss and, thanks to an over-active legal system, jail time for executives who do not perform well.

There is a meek attempt to initiate a rallying cry in this article, in which Panitch suggests capitalism creates social isolation which keeps “informed citizens from coming together to take up radical alternatives to capitalism.” Obviously, Panitch was not at the recent nationwide tea parties, where thousands of informed citizens came together to protest our departure from capitalism. Panitch goes on to say that, with the “formation of new collective identities. . .people could resist the capitalist status quo and begin deciding how to better fulfill their needs.” What's wrong with this assertion? Well, the leftist Socialists are notorious for decrying individualistic tendencies of capitalism—so how can there be a status quo at the same time, among all those capitalist individuals? Second, capitalism is entirely about better fulfilling our individual needs. In fact, it is precisely the opposite that is true. Socialism forces people together to work for the “community's needs” not the individual's needs, and the status quo of individuals that is formed when the only concern is for the “community,” is frightening.

Bringing his article to a close, and with great gusto, Panitch firmly declares that, “Marx was the greater realist.”

We cannot let that remark go un-challenged can we? Marx's economic and socio-political proposals relied heavily on influence he took from the Fabian Socialists (after all, Marx was not the father of socialism/communism). The Fabian socialists knew that the success of their ideas hinged on the development of a new type of “socialist (super)man.” They envisioned a world where men were free to be and the animals provided all of our means of survival. In the Fabian Socialist dreamworld, chickens would literally fly onto our plate for meals, lions would bow down and render themselves as mounts for transport, and whales would pull ships across the sea. Someone who takes influence from this group—is that what you call a realist?

Indeed, Marx made some accurate predictions of what could take place in an industrialized economy. However, the culprit for whom he assigns blame to—free markets—is a blatantly false allegation.
Austrian economists have also been accurate in predicting what can happen in an industrialized economy. But unlike Marx, the Austrian economists are able to provide a clear and accurate explanation of boom/bust cycles and can accurately identify the true culprit and cause of our current economic fiasco—government intervention into the economy and the failed monetary policies of European and U.S. Central banking systems, namely the Federal Reserve banking system.