NationStates Jolt Archive

Let the games begin.

I consider myself to be a reformed Capitalist - that is, I want to put in regulations to protect workers and prevent corporate corruption, however I want the market to be as free as possible.

So I'd be somewhere in the middle, prolly leaning slightly towards Smith tho

Adam smith on taxation

1. "The subject of every State ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the State."

2. "The tax each individual is bound to pay ought to be certain, and not arbitrary. The time of payment, the manner of payment, and the quantity to be paid, ought all to be clear and plain to the contributor, and to ever other person."


3. "Every tax ought to be levied at the time, or in the manner in which it is most likely to be convenient for the contributor to pay it."


4. "Every tax ought to be so contrived as both to take out and to keep out of the pockets of the people as little as possible, over and above what it brings into the public treasury of the State."

I voted for Option 3.

This assumes that Adam Smith and Karl Marx had competing economic theories. If you read Das Kapital, a great deal of Marx' theory was in fact taken word for word from Adam Smith, with much of the rest coming from Riccardo and Malthus. Basically, Marx just took the basic economic theory of the day and took it a step further.

until just now i thought it said adama sandler

This assumes that Adam Smith and Karl Marx had competing economic theories. If you read Das Kapital, a great deal of Marx' theory was in fact taken word for word from Adam Smith, with much of the rest coming from Riccardo and Malthus. Basically, Marx just took the basic economic theory of the day and took it a step further.
He took it a lot further, assuming that, after a while, capitalism couldn't sustain itself. However, Marx lived before the era of mass consumption.

tough to compare them really. I agree with Marx more often than with Smith but i voted for the in between option anyway.

Purly Euclid do you think that mass consumerism has or will prevent the development of monopoly capitalism as predicted by Marx? I personally see a lot of industries moving towards monopoly today. I refer for instance to market rationalisation in pharmaceuticals, entertainment and energy companies, all of which have seen major mergers in the last 10 years. Companies are finding it easier to buy their opposition rather than compete. Anti trust laws will presumably prevent monopolies but the difference between monopoly and oligopoly is negligible.

This assumes that Adam Smith and Karl Marx had competing economic theories. If you read Das Kapital, a great deal of Marx' theory was in fact taken word for word from Adam Smith, with much of the rest coming from Riccardo and Malthus. Basically, Marx just took the basic economic theory of the day and took it a step further.That's a very good point. The differences between Marx and Smith are largely that of interpretation and conclusions. (Although Smith was on record as saying that the main purpose of the police force was to protect the rich and the poor).

He took it a lot further, assuming that, after a while, capitalism couldn't sustain itself. However, Marx lived before the era of mass consumption.
Well: Marx saw the history as a development of class fights. He actually predicted the end of the absolutistic order and the victory of liberal democracy which in his view is serving most the interests of the entrepreneurs (or the bourgeois). He explained that development with the rise of capitalism and the industrial revolution. That created a new class: A wider middle class of non-aristocratic people. Business man, lawyers, teachers, professors: This groups were growing at that time and were more and more less eager to accept to be excluded from political power. Also the economic system was still formed to serve the needs of a feudalistic order. But the economy had developed further.
So he has a point that the take-over of liberal democracy was inevitable. He actually believed that only revolution can led to such a development. A policy of reforms (like it happened in Britain) was impossible in his view. In the case of many countries he was actually right with this assessment. However it can´t be said in that generalisation that he did say it because he said: Reforms are only prolonging things and delaying things. Revolution is inevitable. Marx was in a way actually not anti-captialists. He actually argued that the rise of capitalism was necessary and a needed development of human history. However he argued that capitalism leds to other social differences and to new class fights. The old class fights (burgeois versus aristocrat or monarch) is going to be replaced by the fight worker (proletarian) versus entrepreneur (burgeois). And that would led at the end to a revolution and at the end to the end of all class fights.
And there is the point I fundamentally disagree with him. He sees the economic differences as the only reasons for problems within societies. He assumes that humans are good and not selfish and that only the economic differences and the class interests make them that way. I think he is terribly wrong with that. Humans are selfish, everybody is. And we are not only mean because we want economic advantages. They are also other reasons for that. A "perfect society" without problems and differences - a paradise on earth - is impossible. It is against human nature. And that is the fundamental mistake of Marx. He describes correctly many things in human history like the fight between burgeois and aristocrats (monarchs) in 19 th century Europe. And he predicted correctly that at the end the burgeois are going to win that simply because of the economic power they have (it needed pretty long by the way: after the French revolution in 1789 there was the reestablishment of monarchy by Napoleon in 1804 and in 1815 even the reestablishment of the old order, the revolution of 1848 (which happened in many european countries failed at the end as well). It was not up until 1871 liberal democracy won in France. In other countries it was even much latter. And many countries of the world haven´t reached that point yet.