Marx: ego is not a dirty word

What did marx say about human nature?

This issue came up in a recent discussion here but it also comes up all the time whenever you mention communism or socialism. Someone I spoke to recently said:

Even if the whole world was socialist or communist then it would eventually revert back to capitalism because that is human nature

And in a comment on this blog Mark Miller said:

The problem I see with Marxism is it assumes that human nature can be molded and changed. Where Marxism has been tried it runs into what I'd call "the wall of human nature". It doesn't achieve its stated goals, because imperfect people are involved in the enterprise. Inevitably the same qualities that Marxism tries to overthrow: greed, the hunger for power over others, end up controlling the enterprise. I think Lord Acton's maxim holds true no matter what structure is tried: "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely." Such efforts to create a society where everything is parceled out equally and no one has more power than anyone else is continually frustrated, because human nature keeps getting in the way.

I recognise these opinions as "popular wisdom" but wasn't actually sure what Marx did say about human nature, so I looked it up and here is part of what I found, part of a polemic against Max Stirner:

"Communism is simply incomprehensible to our saint because the communists do not put egoism against self-sacrifice or self-sacrifice against egoism nor do they express this contradiction theoretically either in its sentimental or in its high-flown ideological form; on the contrary, they demonstrate the material basis engendering it, with which it disappears of itself. The communists do not preach morality at all, such as Stirner preaches so extensively. They do not put to the people the moral demand: love one another, do not be egoists, etc.; on the contrary, they are well aware that egoism, just as much as self-sacrifice, is in definite circumstances a necessary form of the self-assertion of individuals. Hence, the communists by no means want,... to do away with the "private individual" for the sake of the "general," self-sacrificing man....

Communist theoreticians, the only ones who have time to devote to the study of history, are distinguished precisely because they alone have discovered that throughout history the "general interest" is created by individuals who are defined as "private persons." They know that this contradiction is only a seeming one because one side of it, the so-called "general," is constantly being produced by the other side, private interest, and by no means opposes the latter as an independent force with an independent history - so that this contradiction is in practice always being destroyed and reproduced. Hence it is not a question of the Hegelian "negative unity" of two sides of a contradiction, but of the materially determined destruction of the preceding materially determined mode of life of individuals, with the disappearance of which this contradiction, together with its unity, also disappear."
- Personal, versus General Interest, from Selections from the remaining parts of The German Ideology by Marx and Engels

Labour: no guts no glory

Q&A: Monday 26th July (video 55 min, expires in 13 days)

Includes Malcom Turnbull (who lost his Deputy Leader position through supporting Rudd's emissions trading scheme), Christine Milne (Deputy Leader of the Greens), Penny Wong (Climate Change Minister)

This is well worth watching to see how Julia Gillard's reworking of the climate change policy is playing out. Penny Wong was very much on the defensive in attempting to justify Labour's backsliding on an issue where the public does want some action. Contrast this with Penny Wong's personal gutsy stand on the gay and asian issue in the same program, which received strong support.

After watching this I felt it possible that Labour might lose this election owing to their perceived inability to take a tough stand on any issue. This might trump the calculations of the Labour Union back deal manipulators who gambled on the women's vote. Time will tell.

Some very brief observations:

• The Greens falsely claim that renewables can do the job
• Malcom Turnbull is incorrect to suggest that China is going green (at the end)
• None of the parties support nuclear energy, which is the best direction to head in as an alternative
• There is general ignorance about the real state of the science, which I believe is best depicted by Pielke snr

Roger Pielke jnr keeps a close eye on Australian climate policy (and everywhere else for that matter). For his analysis of the Gillard policy, see: julia gillard lays out her approach, particularly his comment that:

When will politicians learn that climate policies are a political loser if they require that people "transform the way we live and the way we work"?

I left a comment on his blog, #11.

growing wealth disparity

I regard growing wealth disparity as uncontroversial and an indictment of the system which produces such disparity. I'll just quote an extract from David Harvey's Limits to Capital which provides substantial evidence for growing wealth disparity:

"According to the UN by the mid 1990s the net worth of the 358 richest people in the world was then found to be equal to the combined income of the poorest 45 per cent of the worlds population - 2.3 billion people. The world's 200 richest people more than doubled their net worth in the 4 years to 1998, to more than $1 trillion, so that the assets of the world's top three billionaires were more than the combined GNP of all least developed countries and their 600 million people.... The share of the national income taken by the top 1 percent of income earners in the US more than doubled between 1980 and 2000 while that of the top 0.1 percent more than tripled. The income of the 99th percentile rose 87 percent between 1972 and 2001 while that of the 99.9th percentile rose 497 percent. In 1985 the combined wealth of the Forbes 400 richest people in the US was $238 billion with an average net worth of $600 million, adjusted for inflation. By 2005, their average net worth was $2.8 billion and their collective assets amounted to $1.13 trillion - more than the GDP of Canada. Much of this shift has been due to rapidly rising rates of executive compensation. In 1980, the average chief executive made about $1.6 million a year in today's dollars but by 2004 this had risen to $7.6 million." (p. xi, Intro to the 2006 Verso Edition)

I quoted an extract of Harvey's figure on a reddit thread and received this reply from mrhymer:

"Wealth is not a finite pool that all humans pull from. There is no evidence that if the millionaire in Dubai releases his wealth back into the wild that it will ever find the hand of the poor man in Bangladesh. So studies highlighting the gaps and distributions are foolish post hoc, ergo proctor hoc arguments."

For a more detailed outline of Harvey's views where he does connect the increasing of wealth disparity with the evolution of the capitalist economy into neo liberalism try this interview. I don't agree with all of Harvey but his analysis of the effects of neo liberalism seems sound to me.

blogger comment length restriction

It seems that blogger now has a comment length restriction of 4096 characters.

"There is a flaw in Blogger comment code, that makes the deletion process abort, with large comments. Spammers were exploiting this flaw, to create undeletable comments. Blogger is protecting us from undeletable spam comments, by preventing long comments"
- nitecruzr

It would be better if blogger fixed the flaw in their comment code. Some bloggers like to discuss issues at length.

Christopher Hitchens has oesophageal cancer

You can read his brief announcement, interesting comments from those who love him and bad taste comments from those who hate him, here: An Update from Christopher Hitchens. I admire him for his outspoken support for the Iraq war and wish him well in his battle against cancer.

Related:
the irony of September 11th
waterboarding: DIY

capitalism: for and against

I responded to LinuxLiberty on a reddit thread (source), which began with a misleading quote from John Maynard Keynes.

LinuxLiberty:
It is kind of amazing that capitalism even needs to be defended given the enormous amount of prosperity it has brought to the world. While I won't say the U.S. is an example of free market, in particular like the rest of the world it has a Marxist banking system that repeatedly fails, but it has brought enormous amount of prosperity to even poor people. Look even most poor people live in a house an apartment that has indoor plumbing, electricity, AC, a color television, a DVD player, a phone, a computer with Internet, and many poor people own cars. If you own all of those things that puts you in the top 10% of the rest of the world. The average person in China can't even afford a color television much less a car.

The biggest problem with capitalism is it turns people into spoiled brats who can't even comprehend what a rough life or poverty is.

billkerr:
It's true that capitalism has been the most productive system to date. However, there are also some problems with it, which I would summarise as follows:

• it can't avoid major economic crisis, eg. the last Great Depression and the next one, soon
• it has deformed or crippled the nature of work, especially the way factories operate
• the wealth disparity b/w rich and poor continues to increase
• it promotes the unsustainable dream that you can create more money from money

pielke snrs hypotheses regarding climate change

From Roger Pielke snr, who favours hypothesis 2a, that whilst CO2 is significant it should not be elevated above other climate forcings:

Hypothesis 1: Human influence on climate variability and change is of minimal importance, and natural causes dominate climate variations and changes on all time scales. In coming decades, the human influence will continue to be minimal.

Hypothesis 2a: Although the natural causes of climate variations and changes are undoubtedly important, the human influences are significant and involve a diverse range of first order climate forcings, including, but not limited to, the human input of carbon dioxide (CO2). Most, if not all, of these human influences on regional and global climate will continue to be of concern during the coming decades.

Hypothesis 2b: Although the natural causes of climate variations and changes are undoubtedly important, the human influences are significant and are dominated by the emissions into the atmosphere of greenhouse gases, the most important of which is CO2. The adverse impact of these gases on regional and global climate constitutes the primary climate issue for the coming decades.
- Invitation On Assessing Three Climate Hypotheses

Roger Pielke snr invited feedback on these hypotheses following criticism of them at Real Climate: What do Climate Scientists Think? (See Comments 36, 43, 49)

Pielke snr has now published the feedback he has received about the different hypotheses: Feedback On My Invitation On The Three Hypotheses Regarding Climate Forcings

I did post comments (and received responses) to John Cook’s blog: A Scientific Guide to the 'Skeptics Handbook' , which does seem to make an honest attempt to evaluate evidence about climate change, about Pielke snrs invitation to improve his hypotheses.

32. billkerr at 11:11 AM on 2 July, 2010
hi John,
Have you considered the choice b/w Pielke snrs invitation and hypotheses 2a and 2b? (Invitation On Assessing Three Climate Hypotheses) You seem to support 2b judging by your handbook's CO2 emphasis but 2a may be a better fit for the evidence

Hypothesis 2a: Although the natural causes of climate variations and changes are undoubtedly important, the human influences are significant and involve a diverse range of first order climate forcings, including, but not limited to, the human input of carbon dioxide (CO2). Most, if not all, of these human influences on regional and global climate will continue to be of concern during the coming decades.

Hypothesis 2b: Although the natural causes of climate variations and changes are undoubtedly important, the human influences are significant and are dominated by the emissions into the atmosphere of greenhouse gases, the most important of which is CO2. The adverse impact of these gases on regional and global climate constitutes the primary climate issue for the coming decades.

Response: I hadn't seen Pielke's hypotheses. It seems to me 2a and 2b aren't mutually exclusive - any climate scientist would agree that CO2 is not the only driver of climate and that we need to take into account all forcings. The reason for the emphasis on CO2 is because it is the most dominant and fastest rising forcing. The emphasis on CO2 in the Scientific Guide is also necessary as the 'Skeptics Handbook' fails to recognise the many lines of evidence that more CO2 forces up temperature - this is a somewhat more extreme stance than the more nuanced views of Roger Pielke Snr.

50. billkerr at 10:03 AM on 3 July, 2010
#32 and #33

John,
When you say "The reason for the emphasis on CO2 is because it is the most dominant and fastest rising forcing" you are supporting Pielke snrs hypothesis 2b and rejecting 2a. They are mutually exclusive by my reading.

Doug and John,
The Real Climate discussion that Doug links to predates Pielke snrs invitation for people to improve the wording of the hypotheses if they feel the wording is inadequate, as claimed by Eric in the Real Climate discussion. This Pielke snr post, which also predates the invitation, condenses the different viewpoints

.

study political economy

Given that we are facing the greatest economic crisis in 80 years it is a good idea to begin some serious study of the fundamentals of political economy.

great depression looms

Mainstream economists Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (Telegraph) and Paul Krugman (New York Times) are now saying we are heading for a version of another Great Depression.

Investors are starting to chew over the awful possibility that America's recovery will stall just as Asia hits the buffers. China's manufacturing index has been falling since January, with a downward lurch in June to 50.4, just above the break-even line of 50. Momentum seems to be flagging everywhere, whether in Australian building permits, Turkish exports, or Japanese industrial output.
- Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

There is a difference of ruling class opinion about how to deal with the ongoing economic crisis, either to introduce austerity measures (as in Greece and some other Eurozone countries) or to print more money. Both of the above authors advocate more stimulus and are dismayed at the growing trend to austerity measures.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, With the US trapped in depression, this really is starting to feel like 1932, 04 Jul 2010

Paul Krugman, The Third Depression, June 27, 2010

Update (12th July 2010): Greenspan Says Economy May Be Undergoing a `Pause'

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said the U.S. economy may be undergoing what he called a “pause,” and that he can’t rule out the possibility of a so- called double-dip recession ... Inventory accumulation “has stopped” and production “has flattened out,” the 84-year-old former central banker said.