Gonna skip 90% of your post because it's basically content-free refutation.
RedPhoenixxx wrote:
Redistribution of wealth, in one form or another, is a tenet of pretty much *all* economic theories: capitalist and socialist. The "how" and the "why" you redistribute the wealth both matter equally in distinguishing economic theories.
Thank you! I've been saying this for the last several posts and you seemed to be insisting it didn't make any difference. That's at least a starting point. We agree that the how and why of taxing and spending matter. Good!
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Marx certainly didn't believe you should "redistribute of wealth for the sake of redistributing the wealth". Not in a million years. In fact, he doesn't even mention "wealth", but "capital", and even then it's distinguished between "constant capital" and "variable capital". His doctrine wasn't about redistributing the "variable capital", it was about *the way in which the capitalist system works*, which will lead inevitably to a new economic system.
Sigh. You alternate between broadly glossing over topics, and then focusing on single words. How about you step back and ask how someone who agrees with Marx's theories of capital and it's effect on the laborers in a society would act, and what sort of tax policy that person would support?
If you do that, you'll realize that this sort of person would think that "spreading the wealth around is a good thing".
Look. I'm well aware that Marx was not the first, much less the only person to espouse these broad ideas. However, his theories are fundamentally formed on the idea that inequity of wealth (capital) will result in an untenable condition for the workers. Now, he theorized that this would naturally lead to some form of collapse or uprising which would allow the workers to seize control. And, as I said repeatedly, he didn't clearly define or even much care about the specifics of how that might happen.
The problem here is that you seem to want to say that a statement isn't "marxist" unless it encapsulates everything that Marx believed. IMO, that's an impossible condition to set. A statement is marxist if it matches with some core ideological component of Marx' economic theories and isn't overly "broad". And in that context, the idea of "spreading the wealth around" is pretty much limited to Marx and those who agreed with him about the effect of Capitalism. Marx just happens to be the most well known and easily recognized of that group.
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Marx didn't favour progressive taxation. He didn't think the "capitalist" should pay the "workers" more. He didn't think that capitalists should spread the variable capital equally amongst workers, or that governments should force them to do so. He thought that one class exploited the other, and that this exploitation would lead to over-production, deflation, an hungry and angry lower-class that had become an "army of surplus labour workforce", and that these factors combined together would lead to the collapse of capitalism, and the emergence of a new system.
Yup. Which is exactly what I said when Ari tried to list off a set of steps to bring that about in a country and call that Marxism. Strange that you didn't leap to agree with me then...
I still think you are overly focusing on just one component of Marx's theories. I'm not saying that Obama *is* Marx. I'm just agreeing that the statement Obama made is "marxist". As in, something that those who follow or agree with Marx's ecnomic theories would say.
You're placing far to high a bar on this.
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What you are trying to do is to reduce Marx to a simple and common economic/social/political/philophical principle. "Wealth redistribution to cut the gap between the rich and poor" is simply not Marxism. It's a "social market economy" principle. It's a basic leftist principle. It is a Christian argument. It's a million things, but it's not what made Karl Marx Karl Marx.
First off, I'm not reducing anything. You're trying to insist that a statement that does not include everything Marx believed can't be called "marxist". I simply disagree with that assertion. To me, a statement that is most commonly connected to the theories of Marx can and should be called Marxist. And guess what? Obama's statement matches that.
As to the later portion, you are correct. It's a very common principle held by those on the political left. But Marx was one of the earliest thinkers to focus specifically on the economics of it rather then the philosophy. There's a reason why Marx is listed among one of the fathers of modern socialism, and it's exactly because he approached a broad socio-political concept from a purely economic standpoint. And for that reason, when one is espousing a directly economic idea within the broader context of this socio-political ideology, it's not inaccurate to call that statement "Marxist".
It's exactly the same as if I were to point to someone arguing against censorship who says "I believe that freedom of speach is a good thing" and saying this person is clearly an advocate of the US 1st amendment, and you turn around and insist that that's not correct because the concept of freedom of speech existed prior to that particular bit of writing. And to support that, you list off other aspects in the first amendment that aren't specific to speech, and expand that to the remaining Bill of Rights, and insist that if I can't prove this particular guy agrees with all those things, that my original claim must be false...
Sorry. That's absurd. Obama made a statement that is wholly compatible with Marxist economic theory, and *not* with any others that significantly diverge from his. Again. The how and why is critical here. Obama wasn't just advocating an action for which there could be many reasons, but actually expressing an agreement with the an important "why" (why raise taxes? To spread the wealth around!). You can't get far from Marxist economic theory and agree with that statement.
