What we are dealing with here is another version of the Lacanian 'il n'y a pas de rapport ...': if, for Lacan, there is no sexual relationship, then, for Marxism proper, there is no relationship between economy and politics, no 'meta-language' enabling us to grasp the two levels from the same neutral standpoint, although—or, rather, because—these two levels are inextricably intertwined.
Slavoj ŽižekTags: politics sex economics marxism lacan
Moments are the elements of profit
Karl MarxTags: philosophy economics
Therefore it is not arrogance or narrow-mindedness that leads the economist to discuss these things from the standpoint of economics. No one, who is not able to form an independent opinion about the admittedly difficult and highly technical problem of calculation in the socialist economy, should take sides in the question of socialism versus capitalism. No one should speak about interventionism who has not examined the economic consequences of interventionism. An end should be put to the common practice of discussing these problems from the standpoint of the prevailing errors, fallacies, and prejudices. It might be more entertaining to avoid the real issues and merely to use popular catchwords and emotional slogans. But politics is a serious matter. Those who do not want to think its problems through to the end should keep away from it.
Ludwig von MisesInequality of wealth and incomes is an essential feature of the market economy. It is the implement that makes the consumers supreme in giving them the power to force all those engaged in production to comply with their orders. It forces all those engaged in production to the utmost exertion in the service of the consumers. It makes competition work. He who best serves the consumers profits most and accumulates
riches.
People must learn that the accumulation of wealth by the successful
conduct of business is the corollary of the improvement of their own standard of
living and vice versa. They must realize that bigness in business is not an evil, but both the cause and effect of the fact that they themselves enjoy all those amenities
whose enjoyment is called the “American way of life.
In the market economy the consumers are supreme. Consumers determine, by their
buying or abstention from buying, what should be produced, by whom and how, of
what quality and in what quantity. The entrepreneurs, capitalists, and landowners who
fail to satisfy in the best possible and cheapest way the most urgent of the not yet
satisfied wishes of the consumers are forced to go out of business and forfeit their
preferred position. In business offices and in laboratories the keenest minds are busy
fructifying the most complex achievements of scientific research for the production of
ever better implements and gadgets for people who have no inkling of the scientific
theories that make the fabrication of such things possible. The bigger an enterprise is,
the more it is forced to adjust its production activities to the changing whims and
fancies of the masses, its masters. The fundamental principle of capitalism is mass
production to supply the masses. It is the patronage of the masses that makes
enterprises grow into bigness. The common man is supreme in the market economy.
He is the customer “who is always right.
These people look upon inequality as upon an evil. They do not assert that a definite
degree of inequality which can be exactly determined by a judgment free of any
arbitrariness and personal evaluation is good and has to be preserved unconditionally.
They, on the contrary, declare inequality in itself as bad and merely contend that a
lower degree of it is a lesser evil than a higher degree in the same sense in which a
smaller quantity of poison in a man’s body is a lesser evil than a larger dose. But if
this is so, then there is logically in their doctrine no point at which the endeavors
toward equalization would have to stop. Whether one has already reached a degree of
inequality which is to be considered low enough and beyond which it is not necessary
to embark upon further measures toward equalization is just a matter of personal
judgments of value, quite arbitrary, different with different people and changing in the
passing of time. As these champions of equalization appraise confiscation and
“redistribution” as a policy harming only a minority, viz., those whom they consider
to be “too” rich, and benefiting the rest—the majority—of the people, they cannot
oppose any tenable argument to those who are asking for more of this allegedly
beneficial policy. As long as any degree of inequality is left, there will always be
people whom envy impels to press for a continuation of the equalization policy.
Nothing can be advanced against their inference: If inequality of wealth and incomes
is an evil, there is no reason to acquiesce in any degree of it, however low;
equalization must not stop before it has completely leveled all individuals’ wealth and
incomes.
The social function of economic science consists precisely in developing sound
economic theories and in exploding the fallacies of vicious reasoning. In the pursuit of
this task the economist incurs the deadly enmity of all mountebanks and charlatans
whose shortcuts to an earthly paradise he debunks. The less these quacks are able to
advance plausible objections to an economist’s argument, the more furiously do they
insult them.
la propriété, c'est le vol!
Pierre-Joseph ProudhonTags: philosophy economics anarchy
Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on "income distribution," the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.
Thomas SowellTags: wealth economics socialism income distribution earnings
« first previous
Page 14 of 36.
next last »
Data privacy
Imprint
Contact
Diese Website verwendet Cookies, um Ihnen die bestmögliche Funktionalität bieten zu können.