- We can define this as the return on capital generated not by innovation and risk taking, but rather through the unholy alliance between the business and political classes. Instead of genuine competition, they use the states’ power to legislate, regulate, grant hand outs, permits, government licenses, special tax breaks, and other dispensations as favors to enrich each other.
I make this observation as an unabashed capitalist. Over the course of my career I have started several businesses, some of which have succeeded. In my day job, I invest capital for other capitalists. Around the world, it is undeniable that capitalism has produced more wealth and human well-being than any other system this world has known. The global gains in income that has raised millions out of poverty the past several decades is directly attributed to major economies such as China embracing (at least in part) some form of market-based capitalism.
No, no, it's capitalism.The royalists in coalition carried on their intrigues against one another in the press, in Ems, in Claremont,[93] outside parliament. Behind the scenes they donned their old Orleanist and Legitimist liveries again and once more engaged in their old tourneys. But on the public stage, in their grand performances of state[94] as a great parliamentary party, they put off their respective royal houses with mere obeisances and adjourn the restoration of the monarchy in infinitum. They do their real business as the party of Order, that is, under a social, not under a political title; as representatives of the bourgeois world order, not as knights of errant princesses; as the bourgeois class against other classes, not as royalists against the republicans. And as the party of Order they exercised more unrestricted and sterner domination over the other classes of society than ever previously under the Restoration or under the July Monarchy, a domination which, in general, was possible only under the form of the parliamentary republic, for only under this form could the two great divisions of the French bourgeoisie unite, and thus put the rule of their class instead of the regime of a privileged faction of it on the order of the day. If they nevertheless, as the party of Order, also insulted the republic and expressed their repugnance to it, this happened not merely from royalist memories. Instinct taught them that the republic, true enough, makes their political rule complete, but at the same time undermines its social foundation, since they must now confront the subjugated classes and contend against them without mediation, without the concealment afforded by the crown, without being able to divert the national interest by their subordinate struggles among themselves and with the monarchy. It was a feeling of weakness that caused them to recoil from the pure conditions of their own class rule and to yearn for the former more incomplete, more undeveloped, and precisely on that account less dangerous forms of this rule. On the other hand, every time the royalists in coalition come in conflict with the pretender who confronts them, with Bonaparte, every time they believe their parliamentary omnipotence endangered by the executive power – every time, therefore, that they must produce their political title to their rule – they come forward as republicans and not as royalists, from the Orleanist Thiers, who warns the National Assembly that the republic divides them least, to the Legitimist Berryer, who on December 2, 1851, as a tribune swathed in a tricolored sash, harangues the people assembled before the town hall of the Tenth Arrondissement in the name of the republic. To be sure, a mocking echo calls back to him: Henry V! Henry V!
As against the coalesced bourgeoisie, a coalition between petty bourgeois and workers had been formed, the so-called Social-Democratic party. The petty bourgeois saw that they were badly rewarded after the June days of 1848, that their material interests were imperiled, and that the democratic guarantees which were to insure the effectuation of these interests were called in question by the counterrevolution. Accordingly they came closer to the workers. On the other hand, their parliamentary representation, the Montagne, thrust aside during the dictatorship of the bourgeois republicans, had in the last half of the life of the Constituent Assembly reconquered its lost popularity through the struggle with Bonaparte and the royalist ministers. It had concluded an alliance with the socialist leaders. In February, 1849, banquets celebrated the reconciliation. A joint program was drafted, joint election committees were set up and joint candidates put forward. The revolutionary point was broken off and a democratic turn given to the social demands of the proletariat; the purely political form was stripped off the democratic claims of the petty bourgeoisie and their socialist point thrust forward. Thus arose social-democracy. The new Montagne, the result of this combination, contained, apart from some supernumeraries from the working class and some socialist sectarians, the same elements as the old Montagne, but numerically stronger. However, in the course of development it had changed with the class that it represented. The peculiar character of social-democracy is epitomized in the fact that democratic-republican institutions are demanded as a means, not of doing away with two extremes, capital and wage labor, but of weakening their antagonism and transforming it into harmony. However different the means proposed for the attainment of this end may be, however much it may be trimmed with more or less revolutionary notions, the content remains the same. This content is the transformation of society in a democratic way, but a transformation within the bounds of the petty bourgeoisie. Only one must not get the narrow-minded notion that the petty bourgeoisie, on principle, wishes to enforce an egoistic class interest. Rather, it believes that the special conditions of its emancipation are the general conditions within whose frame alone modern society can be saved and the class struggle avoided. Just as little must one imagine that the democratic representatives are indeed all shopkeepers or enthusiastic champions of shopkeepers. According to their education and their individual position they may be as far apart as heaven and earth. What makes them representatives of the petty bourgeoisie is the fact that in their minds they do not get beyond the limits which the latter do not get beyond in life, that they are consequently driven, theoretically, to the same problems and solutions to which material interest and social position drive the latter practically. This is, in general, the relationship between the political and literary representatives of a class and the class they represent.
After this analysis it is obvious that if the Montagne continually contends with the party of Order for the republic and the so-called rights of man, neither the republic nor the rights of man are its final end, any more than an army which one wants to deprive of its weapons and which resists has taken the field in order to remain in possession of its own weapons.
It is a sign of my affection for you that I have three Wikipedia tabs open in order to properly contextualize a 170-year-old Marx essay. It is also worth noting that Barry Ritholtz is a capitalist's capitalist; Ritholtz calling for more regulation is akin to Elizabeth Warren saying credit cards can do great things. Of course, we are in corner-case bizarro world since Bill Gross is now championing a 70% tax cut. Of course, now that the fix is in, errbody mad if they aren't part of the fix so corner-case bizarro world ain't nearly as weird as we would have expected it to be. THAT SAID Sounds good to me. This is generally where I lose patience with Marx: his driving principle is that we're all idiots and the world will be better if someone is in charge and that someone's principle qualification is "agreeing with Marx." Why yes, Karl, the 2nd Republic was a shitshow, thanks for noticing. Really, France was a shitshow from Louis the 16th through de Gaulle. Be that as it may, Marx wrote about a social structure that much more closely matched "crony capitalism" than "capitalism."The peculiar character of social-democracy is epitomized in the fact that democratic-republican institutions are demanded as a means, not of doing away with two extremes, capital and wage labor, but of weakening their antagonism and transforming it into harmony.
Only one must not get the narrow-minded notion that the petty bourgeoisie, on principle, wishes to enforce an egoistic class interest.
After this analysis it is obvious that if the Montagne continually contends with the party of Order for the republic and the so-called rights of man, neither the republic nor the rights of man are its final end, any more than an army which one wants to deprive of its weapons and which resists has taken the field in order to remain in possession of its own weapons.
His driving point is that whoever is in charge is looking out for someone's interest, and under capitalism that's the people with the capital. This is relevant to the discussion of crony capitalism vs. capitalism because it implies that's a distinction without a difference.
Assumes "capitalism" is a state rather than a direction. Capitalism, left to its own devices, becomes feudalism. Piketty said that, Marx said that. Marx, unlike the rest of the world, argues that it must become feudalism; most everyone else argues somewhere between "lots of capitalism" and "some capitalism." I would argue that "crony capitalism" is "lots of capitalism": it's that "capitalism" where "the market" has consolidated wealth into hereditary oligarchs with the ability to warp and bend civic structures to maximize their impunity and ability to accumulate wealth. Ritholtz lists eight examples of things that do not benefit you in the slightest unless you are wikipedia-page wealthy. More than that, he lists eight examples that aren't "stupid rich people tricks" they're cases where public money is being used to enrich private individuals. "Capitalism" by definition should make a level playing field between all capitalists; when the State favors the extraordinarily rich over the ostentatiously rich, the ostentatiously rich get mad and bitch about crony capitalism.
Not in the bit a quoted, and not in general either. Marx argues that capitalism must become socialism, as a synthesis of "but muh risk and innovashun!" and "how come I do all the work and you get all the rewards?" and that feudalism had to become capitalism. Marx might have turned Hegel on his head, but he kept the gist of history being the world figuring itself out and inching towards perfection.
You misunderstand me. Marx, in your words, is arguing as to the evolution of society whereas I'm arguing as to the eventual decomposition of policy. Marx is saying "this is what it has to become" while I'm arguing "this is what it will be if left to its own devices." The typical argument against Marxism/Leninism is that it requires altruism by everyone at every level but more altruism by those with the power to affect more than their own lot in life. The typical argument against capitalism is it rewards a lack of altruism.