tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4433144336299288135.post2453743867663244459..comments2024-03-26T13:27:26.499+00:00Comments on Zelo Street: Iain Martin - Corbyn-Phobic ClownTim Fentonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00726447899972084146noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4433144336299288135.post-66788119995706230772017-07-01T18:09:40.555+01:002017-07-01T18:09:40.555+01:00Ian Martin's take is very similar to a piece T...Ian Martin's take is very similar to a piece Tory Lord, Danny Finklestein had published as an Op Ed in The Times this week. I think this is the new attempt at a right-wing media Corbyn take-down.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4433144336299288135.post-89658076714342391782017-07-01T08:02:29.793+01:002017-07-01T08:02:29.793+01:00"workers take over the means of production, s..."workers take over the means of production, stealing private property and running the economy..."<br /><br />And what, pray tell, is so wrong with an economy owned and run by those who, erm, actually run it (as opposed to the self-regarding managerial class and their idle rich owners come clueless marionettes who imagine that they run it).<br /><br />I don't think for one minute that Corbyn or McDonnell think such is realistically achievable (even if some form of it did feature in their wildest dreams, as it often does nine) given how utterly conservative (small c) and completely 'class unconscious' the working classes (and I include a great many of the so called 'middle class' in that, shall we call it 'taxononym'). However, I fear the delicate little ranting righties might be mistaking a drive to having a broader, more diverse and dare I say more representative set of voices and opinions heard more widely (be it through, street stalls, marches, alternative media such as this very blog), with an effort to overturn liberal 'democracy' proper.<br /><br />What's more, and to paraphrase Proudhon, all property is theft! Proudhon was talking about land, and incidentally also said "Property is freedom". I'll expand, by asserting that all landed property (land and natural resources) is essential the product of thousands of years of theft, thuggery, illigetimate land grabs and immoral seizures none of which are laundered by a series of sanitised transactions by the gentry or even you honest to goodness homeowner just trying to get by in this world. Not any more than the sale of a stolen TV at a car boot sale sanitizes it simply because the transaction was conducted in a civil manner (no broadsword to the noggin) and in good faith. The TV remains somebody else's property; just the land and Earth natural resources belong to nobody and everybody, and are the common heritage of mankind, nit some sharp elbowed spiv or slick, amoral and opportunistic mining operation out in the Congo.<br /><br />Also, all other property, that which is neither land nor natural resource, is by reason either a produced good (the product of labour and land in the broadest sense) or a service (the product of exploitation and expropriation; of labour directly and indirectly, and of society by way of the education, healthcare, infrastructure, etc; and of land proper by way of office space, etc). There is nary a thing or service of value on this planet which hasn't been stolen by way of the uneven power relations, unjust circumstances and abuses of power which pervade modern capitalism. <br /><br />The gentry tried buying reform of feudalism; the and their bourgeoisie decedents merely became the new fiefs and lords of the manor, only without formal title and a sence of genetic entitlement. It behoves many of these 'captains of industry', 'entrepreneurs'<br />and 'self-made' petty-bourgeoisie to develop a sense of humility, realise precisely who they've trod on to get where they are (be they employees, or down trodden foreign workers who were paid a nickel to build their cheap office furniture or braved unsafe working condition to lower the cost of the office equipment, the computer, their photocopier, etc) and perhaps yield a little of that jeolously expropriated wealth back to those who created it, and a little of the economic power and agency they, as members of the management or ownership classes, have thus far hoarded for themselves and in my experience abused.anubeonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16129071449719839802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4433144336299288135.post-72423617139382041032017-06-30T13:58:40.817+01:002017-06-30T13:58:40.817+01:00The other point, of course, is that this is just a...The other point, of course, is that this is just another cheering indicator of the degree to which this idiot, and those he speaks for, have, over the last 2 weeks, really begun to crap themselves.<br /><br />What changed, guys?A.Robot (Mrs)noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4433144336299288135.post-64830462662778580932017-06-30T13:37:47.499+01:002017-06-30T13:37:47.499+01:00This Martin chap sounds like another of those righ...This Martin chap sounds like another of those right wing free market zealots whose selectively read the Wealth of Nations (and totally over-estimated the importance of Smiths "the invisible hand" references) but has utterly failed to even begin to understand it's defining work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, if he's even heard of it at all.<br /><br />That Tim Worstall's another one.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4433144336299288135.post-23729819318587591332017-06-30T13:35:46.657+01:002017-06-30T13:35:46.657+01:00The trouble with the likes of Iain Martin is that ...The trouble with the likes of Iain Martin is that he's a one-dimensional idiot.<br /><br />I doubt if he's actually read Adam Smith......No, I mean REALLY READ Adam Smith. Or Karl Marx. Peddling far right bullshit doesn't count as understanding, but it does account for his employment by Rupert Murdoch and all the other oligarchs and liars.<br /><br />Which means he was a racing certainty to "confuse" trade and human creativity and invention with Capitalism. The latter is of course a leech which lives off the back of the former. Which was the point both Marx and Smith were trying to make.<br /><br />But I don't expect Martin and his motley crew to understand that. They'll be far too busy twitching their curtains through paranoia. Or setting their burglar alarms - thanks to the kind of society thay've helped create in their own tiny way. That'll be the society that doesn't exist according to the unlamented White Russian loon, Ayn Rand, a phrase copied by her tenth rate pupil Thatcher.<br /><br />Martin, like Niall Ferguson, is an utter no-mark. Cannon fodder for a system that is quite literally bankrupt, immoral and evil. Its days are numbered. Martin just doesn't realise it. Or is too stupid to understand why.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com