| This question <71|71> overall <75|77> Hans: <70|77>. |
| Question 148: Do you know of other phenomena in capitalism which seem to be the result of “magic”? |
| [76] Hans: Capitalist Magic in your Back Yard Maine's answer [71] is a good effort and Maine is getting a good grade. I will nevertheless criticize what she writes, because I want you to understand the difference between a Marxist critique and the usual loyal or diversionary criticism which you can pick up from the mass media, which does not question capitalism but ultimately strenghtens it. |
| Maine's first example is that government spends too much on “questionable allocations.” The magic, according to Maine, is: what “pressures and elements” are behind this? It is undoubtedly true that government sometimes acts in bad faith, channeling money to some beneficiaries while pretending to act in the general interest. But the scheme “tax everybody and give the money to a few privileged groups” is a very ancient and also much less efficient form of exploitation than the scheme “have your employees produce things for the market and pay them less than the value they produce.” The second scheme is ubiquitous, and the first only a small sideshow compared to the second. Certain “critics” vocally keep pointing to the first so that people do not see the second. |
| Maine's second example is the stock market, which does not do what people predict it to do. Even if it would be more predictable, it would still be magic. The stock market is the result of our own social activity, why does it then act as an independent force like the weather? According to the textbooks, the stock market channels investment into the right direction. The decision how much to invest and where is one of the most important economic decisions: why is it done in boardrooms behind locked doors or through the stock market lottery? And why has the stock market expanded so enormously in the last 15 years while investment itself has remained constant at a moderate level? Obviously, more is going on in the present stock market boom than you can read in the textbooks, but what is it? It is frightening how little we know about it---after all, many of us have our retirement funds invested in it. |
| Maine's third example is the price of homes. For many, the home is the biggest investment they will ever make, yet home prices are, varying from region to region, subject to inexplicable bubbles or depressions. The magic of capitalism is not just fireworks affecting others, which we can watch on TV like the bombs “our” government drops all over the world, but it jeopardizes the very basics of our own lives too. |
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