Finance...
Best summed up as,"If you do not have money or no way of making it,you cannot spend it and must depend on public or private charity...and be at the beck and call of the State or be used and abused by your private benefactor... ".The latter point Marx must have understood very well since he was fed false information by his close associate and financier, Friedrich Engels,a former Prussian soldier who simply wanted a unified Germany,using Marx as a willing stooge to write purple prose against French kings,generals,democrats and Louis Napoleon who were the main stumbling blocks to German unity and militarism...
What then was this wrong and misleading information in 1865-1866?
Plant and machinery is renewed every 15-20 years,not every 8-10 years...Engels had supplied misleading information about this feature of industrial renewal.
Money
There is no Universal Equivalent since central banks set the rate of interest and,based on this, currency traders set the rate of exchange for a currency centrally in New York and London.
Again,in London,the British Secret Service is heavily involved in the gathering of financial and economic information in order to manipulate currency flows in Britain's interests.
The CIA is heavily involved in the gathering of economic and technical intelligence to manipulate commodity and raw materials prices particularly the price of grain,maintain technological dominance, break down tariff barriers and bankrupt poorer countries in a double act with financial concerns in New York and London.
All of these quantities and measures are subject to MANIPULATION...
There was,as of 2008, 100 trillion in finance capital in the world economy while total global industrial production amounted to 30 trillion ( Catholic Radio News Service of America, 2008). What has been well-known is the burden of dead capital ànd what we are experiencing now is the burning-off of finance capital in A Holiday for the World which also puts a stop to the greater part of the problems caused by police,armies,crime and commerce (Die Panikmache) and imperialism.
It is essential that the covid-19 crisis be used to consume the greatest possible mass and quantity of finance capital and turn it into government debt and thereby create a permanent lever against high interest rates to more or less indefinitely eliminate the ghost of dead capital on society and prepare the way for a very different form of polis.
However, the opposite could be the case in countries with a narrow surfeit of finance capital after the diversion of the greater part of dead capital into the National Debt of those countries meaning . That could entail that there is no money for new investment in plant,factories,higher wages or public investment in what makes the three features of contemporary capital possible,namely food production, housing and public infrastructure. In Ireland,we are facing a crisis of overdevelopment as is Britain and Northern Europe with a lot of attendant problems for human rights,justice and the rule of law as . We witness this fact in the health service and in the chicanery of the police and widespread medical nonsense-talk.
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What then is it to be,stagnation or countries enjoying the fruits of their own labour?
NEITHER...but there could be a stuttering effect on infrastructure expenditure and national current expenditure in the interim...
Civilisation is passing over in all countries. It is now synonymous with commercial super profits,bogus self-employment, middlemen and agency working,tax evasion,downstreaming production to basketcase countries such as India and China,financial speculation in property and rackrenting , extortion by banks and the middle class and wasteful expenditure on overdevelopment in West and East alike and industrial over investment...
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"Nothing can stop the march of history.."
...Today despite the make-believe nonsense and mock heroics,communism has recovered from its apparent demise and defeat. Everywhere LABOUR and CENTRISM has its eyes set on EQUITY and SOCIAL JUSTICE. That is the undiluted truth of Catholicism and I am one of them who believes in the giving hand,both public and private charity. However, I do not believe in the syncretic idealism of theologists. That said,today the barque of Peter dispatches the Good News of Christian charity and universal goodwill to the seven continents.
And what are the demands of the Church?
An END TO CAPITALISM and WAR and CONFLICT between NATIONS ...
Trade
There is,again,no common measure or quantity to Trade or Free Trade,a patent myth of Britain and US go-betweens. Some countries barter,some exchange for money,gold,silver,diamonds or precious items drawn " from a stock of good things" and some a combination of both . The General Rule is :" If you do not send an object of value out,you do do not get anything back unless you seize it by force or hold out the threat of war and The Seven Plagues of The Apocalypse to gain reward".
Imperialism
...something that bedevilled Marx's mind and puzzled his successors in the twentieth century and still has some resonance in Britain and the Arab world.
Three little words:Smash,Grab,STEAL...
...or, "Where there is a little, take a lot;where there is nothing,take everything!" (The Joiners' Song)( per Nigel Glover).
17.12.2020
National Debt and Credit
Since the introduction of the European currency in1999,the value of housing stock in the south has risen to 476 billion euros whereas the National Debt stands at one quarter to one half of this amount.
Therefore, the borrowing level index of fixed domestic capital to national debt is 2:1 or thereabouts.
The mobility of investment?When wealth accrues in a society after its creation,fixed wealth stays in that society . Eventually,it is depleted and written off. The harbingers of doom believe that it is "internationally mobile capital" which capital is not. Capital,to repeat, stays where it was generated i.e. in that same location since all capital is FIXED TO A TIME AND PLACE.
When one considers that Ireland has a National Pension Reserve Fund of 876 billion euros and three trillion of non fixed national capital assets the National Debt of 225 billion euros and an annual Gross National Product of over one trillion euros and growing at the fastest rate in Europe, one is left confused and in wonder by progress on the basis of collaborative collective bargaining after 1987 . However,many are only marginally better off in real terms.
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However,a rejoinder concerning the source of Structural Funds from the European Union. More recently,it would seem that the European Union has take back from Ireland every agricultural grant,infrastructure ECU and regional,industrial and social farthing and penny it ever gave to Ireland WITH INTEREST. It is not a question of money,we no longer want foreigners such as the Germans and English in our country.
22.12.2020
Prices. Super-profits. The United Kingdom.
Retail prices are set at 4:1 vis-à-vis wholesale prices. We see this most clearly on the high street during the January sales when shoes and boots are discounted for a mark-up of £10.
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Super profits and retail prices. Producer prices in the East and retail prices in the West?
Again in high street shops trying to catch the unwary customer we see a mark-up of 71:5. These are what are known as superprofits extracted by wealthy parasites.
Taxation. Social security/welfare.
The state universally takes a quarter of private and corporate wealth every year. Government then REDISTRIBUTES wealth to social security/welfare,education, policing, defence , infrastructure and capital spending in civilised countries.
The state pays back not just the tax revenue raised from the marginalised but three times more. Read the story of Zacchaeus the tax-collector in Luke 19.
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...Sed caveat..
Marx " on the money". Wages.
Marx through his contacts with the English carpenters' union leader and stick-in-the-mud General Secretary of the International Workingmens' Association, Odger, learned that there is no concomitance between wage rises and price rises. Our contemporary politicians, Thatcher and Schroeder and the duelling Social Democrat of the 1860's who Schroeder got his bright spark ideas from about the Iron Law of Wages,Lassalle,believed . Real improvements can be won.Anything else is German FATALISM or neo-liberalism or totalitarianism...
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23.2.2021
Commerce. State capitalism.Marx "on the money" again. In aventis.
Marx in his letter to Lassalle of 12 November 1858 was already perched to recant by informing Lassalle that the period from 1843 to 1857-8 "was his best by far,the best period of his life beyond a shadow of a doubt".
Marx wrote about shop assistants that " they shared the same point of view as their employers" i.e.exploiters who give the purchaser the runaround or try to panic them by a display of abrasive haste(The Communist Manifesto,1847-8) ....die Panikmache (Lenin,Two Tactics of Social Democracy,1902-3)...
26.2.2021
Commerce."Promoters". Crime.
As regards being shortchanged by shop assistants, that money "rests" in the shop owners bank account or is used to buy alcohol for young hooligans to cause social disruption and noisy scenes directed at radicals and trade unionists. That is how Sinn Fein has climbed the greasy pole to the top by the manipulation of small shopkeepers.
27..2.2021
Marx on innuendo..."De te fabula narratur"....wide of the mark...very wide of the mark,in fact...
It is only good friends who correct your shortcomings, not strays in Renaults, Citroens or Peugeots. The latter are gasbags who go behind backs to carry stories to the local police and,worse again,to "doctors" such as those who drive German cars l. I am referring to Chief Inspector Pat Harte.
28.2.2021
Marx. Taxation. The National Debt
Marx realising his shortcomings said nothing about TAXATION, but this is the book of Marx's projected sixtet Grundrisse,1858 which may best be written by a pathetic,penny-pinching philistine, a government auditor.Fiscal matters concern fdie Haushalt/the Budget/ national household budgeting. However, more could be learnt from Lenin's plan to teach "double-entry bookkeeping" to the Russian worker-managers and keep tabs on the managers,the rising bureaucratic caste.Lenin,for all his shortcomings,realised that like all castes they were "mainly bluffers" (Jim Quinn,CPI/Unite the Union)...
Marx. His theory of the General Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall?
Way out by the lighthouse... The final crisis of capitalism, my backside...
Marx made a mess of his theory on PROFIT in Theories of Surplus Value and left these s writings of 1861-1863 to the editting hand of Karl Kautsky("Synmachus") who he loathed for "economic illiteracy".he 3-volume Theories of Surplus Value tell us very little, no more than Volume 2 of Capital. The 20 pages of Volume 1 of Capital tell us all that we need to know of what he calls The General Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall...his own " revolutionary cookbook"(Lenin,1913) concoction,a NEW MILLENARIANISM, at base. Mere mortals reckon that there is only SAME OLD, SAME OLD.
Perhaps,then,we should remember Trotsky's formulation," There is no economic crisis that capitalism cannot overcome." and not become caught by pessimism or delight when the economy falters.
It is not the end of the world..
3.6.2021
An absolute disgrace!"I told you so..."
The scholars at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism wrote about "contradictions which arise from real life" in their prefaces to the writings of Marx, Engels and Lenin,a profound wisdom .Compare and contrast The Communist Manifesto of November 1847-February 1848 with its endorsement of child labour from the earliest years and combining mental and manual labour to Capital (1866-1867). Note the Factory Inspectors reports of eight-and nine-year- olds working in textile mills and bakeries for thirteen hour shifts and the strict division of labour in Marx's vainglamorous recasting of his earlier remarks. I am referring to Capital Volume One.
Whoopsa! I think Herr Karl Marx and Engels were once again partly responsible for this appalling catastrophe as was,more so, Malthus and the rest of the bright sparks and "blind guides" who listen without hearing and look without seeing and cannot see the profound misery and suffering their theories and idle philosophising create no more than doctors or other members.of the intelligelntsia . One of those miserable curs,worse than a psychiatrist,Freud being a case in point.
Capital 1866-1867
Capital,Marx's magnus opus is a work of tedious prose ,a product of dilatory patience and understanding. However,its authors' most popular work,The Communist Manifesto,casts a dark shadow over its author and the movement he founded. That movement slipped totally out of his grip at the Amsterdam Conference of The International Workingmen's Association in 1872.
It is a brilliant,stunning work of genius but that genius was utterly shameless. He was not the only writer who fiddled while Rome burned and little children suffered.As for the poor,"that passively rotting mass " as he cruelly described them in The Communist Manifesto,they too fluctuate between one class,workplace,circumstance and another. Neither they nor all soldiers are completely bad, evil or useless-something Stalin could see very clearly but Marx, definitely not...
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New times
It's time for non dictatorial types to take stock...
Firstly,the party of Progress is a lot larger in England today and does not number a total of a mere 250-350 in Western Europe. Rather 500 000 in Britain,alone. It goes by the name of the Labour Party and is part of an international network of like-minded parties which as Marx preached "does not set up sectarian principles of its own" . Lenin called ideology "the sectish spirit" and " national exclusiveness"...
Secondly,have not Labour and others not achieved immeasurably more in terms of the well-being of the most vulnerable,poor and underprivileged and working class than Marx. Possibly Lenin in 1919 vis-a-vis female work conditions set out to achieve a better social settlent in a very narrow and philistine way with very little success?...
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8.6.2021
Russia Resurgent
Two of the proponents of Eisenhower or Truman's theory of military spending,the "military-industrial complex",were Kennedy and Gorbachev. They talked self-defeating, counterfeit nonsense about "the military-industrial complex".Lenin's Imperialism,the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916) was the blue print for Gorbachev's Speeches and Writings (Progress Publishers,1986, Moscow) and Perestroika (Collins,1987). While Gorbachev did great work for peace and East-West rapprochement, freedom of speech and human rights,it is only in recent years that Russia has gained technological parity vis-a-vis some weapons.
Gorbachev's legacy?
International agreements on the curtailment of weapons AND the mixed economy.
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Marx.The Question of style.French or German?The question of Marx's writing style and epigrammatic brilliance.
GERMAN, THROUGH AND THROUGH! Make no mistake about that,those of you who hate Germans..
19.6.2021
Trade. Navigation. Ireland. Capital
What is Marx's most brilliant discovery?. He comes at it rather casually in Grundrisse ,namely,that the discovery of America created the world market. Unquestionably,it is in navigation and seafaring and trade to North America that the origins of our economic system originate . Something ignored by ignorant bullies and the drunken emigrant family,the vast majority of Irishmen. You will find that behind every Provo lurks an unvarnished fascist who must be firmly and brutally dealt with. It is in the lengthy examination of the Irish Navigation Acts from 1714 onward and exchange that we see Marx as an erudite historian,a friend of the worker and sailor.
Marx's apocalyptic prophecies and possibly,one might say,determinism? Those can be explained by the fact that the world economy was not well enough developed when he was a student of political economy.
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"The dictatorship of the proletariat"?
This is much better rendered by Lenin in 1922,"The dictatorship of the proletariat is the democracy of the 99% over the 1%"..
Revolution?
It was Engels who formulated the theory. Has it any relevance in an era of representation and the large-scale separation of legislative, executive and judicial powers. We say in opposition to the QUB/MI5 mouthpiece,Colin Campbell,inter armes exclamant leges. Engels wrote that,
"When the further development of relations in production are no longer compatible with social relations,a revolution,be it peaceful or violent,comes on the order of the day for everyone". Therein lies change in England since 1532,France since 1789 and America since 1776 and Russia since the Revolutions of 1917 and Ireland since 1913.
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1.2.2022
Small town boy and uptown girl
Commerce. Intransigence. Industry. Dispute resolution.
Try as they might,all businessmens' plans reverberate on themselves and come to naught. Staff become bolshy and mistreat even favoured customers and big spenders. Dismay at 'emotional' insensitivity and 'high prices' sets in. Time passes and disenchantment grows into disruption and mutual rejection. Finally,hostility to management,owners and customers becomes clear. The trade unions appear. The customer base shrinks and there is talk of a 'workers' buyout' and self-management is discussed;there follow work-to-rules. Eventually management is forced to lay-off workers and sell plant, machinery and stock. However,Thermo-King Galway is a case where an attempt to sell up was averted in 1965, not because of some imaginary left-wing elixir but because both sides were prepared to compromise.
In the latter,this example shows the great strength of Irish collaborative, consensual bargaining,a Labour Court. Try as you will to deny it ,Bolsheviks,this conciliation measure was borrowed from the National Industrial Relations Court in the US of New Deal provenance. Likewise, in the case of Northern Ireland,the Labour Relations Agency. Reagan was opposed to all such attempts at conciliation and had to be halted in his superficial 'free market' ambitions by Congress,as Trump was,decades later.
One could argue that this model cannot and should not be followed where,as in Britain,there is no tradition of conciliation and mutual acceptance of arbitration whether by governmental or political bodies. There is always in Britain,"a falling out in the camp".
Different strokes for different folks.
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4.4.2022
Barter?
One irrefutable historical argument which cannot be refuted exists to claims that there is no Universal Equivalent,money,and that modern countries can barter.
The Soviet Union traded by barter but by the later stages of its existence,this feature of its economic trading arrangements was scorned.
The primitivism?
Not trading in dollars. But here's the twist,the Soviet Union had more in rouble assets than it had in liabilities. Having to trade in dollars was politically unacceptable because it would have made the East solely a supplier of raw materials to the West. Likewise,it would have put its economy at the mercy of the English and US money swindlers i.e. currency traders,not to mention boom-and-bust economics. Those perennial bugbears of non-imperialist countries were what brought socialism to power in 1917.
That glaring feature of modern imperialism is what Putin is now trying to avoid. Trying to turn the tables on the West, he is demanding that Western governments pay in roubles for Russian oil and gas exports. It is clear that if this demand is held to, Germany's economy could collapse. Macro- and geopolitical factors indicate that Germany and other countries must comply with Russia's demand.
Russia or America?
Neither! The game has moved on. The ball is now in China's court. China is the world's largest industrial producer. Indeed,it was China's economic development based on dollar- and euro-trading which isolated the Soviet Union and caused its economic collapse in 1991.
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12.5.2022
Our times. The North of Ireland? Politics?
Mentally disturbed women in Sinn Fein,I am thinking in particular of Michelle Gildernew and her bar-room spoofer brother should not hold forth on any serious issue unless it is PMT or family differences. Neither is qualified to give speeches about anything apart from dangerous dogs, something they probably learned from Tom Mc Donnell of the Communist Party of Ireland,Militant Left/ Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed,Cork and Dublin and Boston/ G2.
Like all Sinn Fein dictators and dunghill generals coming and going to that little homosexual in Carrickmore,they both talk a lot of nonsense. Only the grassroots type are of any use or exhibit a grain of sense or good judgement.
Why mention these two superannuated bores and plagiarists in an article pointing out Marx's ready-rub German logic?
Compare and contrast,all you elementary scholars such as Michelle 'Sully ' Gildernew and Colin 'Devine' Gildernew who collaborate closely with the PSNI to quench the fires of democracy. Like all right-wing lunatics,their efforts inevitably will end as all Thatcherites' end with a 'heave-ho and away-we-go'. Thatcher's career ended in tears and Reagan hadn't the power of reason at any stage in his Presidency. Look to this duo's belligerent speeches and caustic remarks. Vipers,not politicians. Ratbags! Michelle Gildernew has a mood disorder and an abusive manner similar to every woman without a clue...someone who wants to tell you where she pissed last,the trademark of all informers,that and getting access to your dwelling and pissing on the floor. The latter is known as 'shitting in the nest' or 'overstaying your welcome'.
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Say,"Don't come back!" to these people. Give Sinn Fein no votes and they will leave you in peace,at the mercy of those wayfaring strangers,the RUC/PSNI who they collaborate with openly. Offer to buy them a packet of suppositories because they are blocked up with dung by eating large meals at night.
Say,"Put a beggar on horseback and he'll ride to hell."
Sinn Fein centralised control and equality?
The great truth is that neither Hegelian divine right or Marxist proto-relativism,the grey dividing line outside the Soviet Union in the 1930's holds much water anymore given that we have a common law society in the UK,a custom law arrangement in parts of Germany mixed with statist law and a police state in many parts of the capitalist world. We see the latter coming to the fore since Labour came to power in England and Wales in 1997(May).
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7.8.2022
It would be fanciful for an Irish former combattant to kid himself that he would do better than Marx in an age of ephemera and idleness and frivolity and poisoning. We must in this era of people searching for answers,renewed aggression and endless wars ask ourselves if we can renew critical interest in the 'statement of modern times' contained in Capital since it relates to everybody's favourite topic,Money.
One thing is however contradictory, Masur's Table of Needs. We cannot avoid the fact that the need for food,shelter and clothes comes first in the hierarchy of needs. Let us think therefore vertically like Masur and horizontally like Marx with the theory of capital accumulation and profit.
The Physiocrats did not get everything right and we must certainly prefer Marx,but there is great truth in the eighteenth century observation of then economic science that land is the basis of all wealth.
I see economics and politics and the industrial movement not as one horse finishing first but as a multi-facetted,multiform,multiplex conundrum and equation lending itself not to one result but many in many shapes and sizes...in lay man's language I mean that there are more questions than answers.
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23.8.2022
Trade.
While money is the method and means of exchange,it did not appear in Ireland until the Norman Conquest..
Trade only appears on the scene when goods move from one area to another,from one hand to another usually up until relatively recently in barter but since,and only since,the rise of empire for.money be it coin,notes or bills of exchange...only Irish Army morons cannot see that...
Money? Empire,empire,empire...a hundred times over empire and that,too,has its apologists to this day... methinks,since the collapse of empire,most lately the tendons of the American empire,we are about to see the re-emergence of barter if only for 'pieces of paper' i.e. shares,led by governments anxious to increase other forms of leverage not covered by loan to capital ratios...
28.10.2022
The latest European Central Bank manoeuvre. Industrial and finance capital
What gameplan is being followed with interest rates set at 2% and inflation running at 7-11% in the Eurozone?
What is being carried on is the old European mainland game of degrading finance or 'dead' capital. This will reduce the weight of finance capital. The losers will be those possessed of large sums of finance capital. Is this just not yet another recasting of what the Nazis associated with the Jews,namely,finance capital and commercial monopoly.
The first out of the traps are,as usual,the Italians with the election of an extremist right-wing government. Let us prepare for an international showdown since,soon,the Germans will join in this madness.
Let German and Italian answer one question,"How are you going to take the path to war and international confrontation without nuclear weapons". As the Germans well know,at my behest and express instruction,German plutonium left that country for Russia to checkmate those who wanted Germany to arm itself with nuclear weapons (June 6 to August 2005, Freiburg-im-Breisgau und ZPE).
Joseph Paul Mc Carroll
