Tag Archives: marxism

Jack Goldstone

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Here’s a long interview with Jack Goldstone in Salon, who wrote the 1991 book Revolution and Rebellion in the Modern World. His basic idea was that when “selfish elites” starve the government of resources, things get hard for ordinary people (from the poor to the upper middle class, I would say), and that is when revolutions can happen. He says when a society mostly consists of older, less educated people in a stagnant income situation (like former Soviet socialist republics), revolutions are more likely to be peaceful and focus on reform. When a society has more young, educated people in an economic freefall, that is when violent revolutions are more likely to happen. His vision of a stable society is one where elites agree to share the wealth somewhat to promote stability, then they educate and develop cohorts of future elite leaders. Too many educated people chasing too few elite roles is dangerously unstable, in his view. A thought that occurs to me (not in the artcle) is you can see a basis for the emphasis on STEM – educated people in a narrow way that allows them to earn a living and contribute to the larger economy, without the likelihood of them becoming politically active.

The solutions he offers are non-partisan problem solving in Congress, blue ribbon panels, and “citizen assemblies”. It’s a long article and my thoughts above barely scratch the surface.

By the way, here is what a “citizens’ assembly” is according to Wikipedia:

A citizens’ assembly (also known as citizens’ jury or citizens’ panel or people’s jury or policy jury) is a body formed from citizens or generally people to deliberate on an issue or issues of local or national or international importance. The membership of a citizens’ assembly is randomly selected, as in other forms of sortition. It is a mechanism of participatory action research (PAR) that draws on the symbolism, and some of the practices, of a legal trial by jury. The purpose is to employ a cross-section of the public to study the options available to the state on certain questions and to propose answers to these questions through rational and reasoned discussion and the use of various methods of inquiry such as directly questioning experts. In many cases, the state will require these proposals to be accepted by the general public through a referendum before becoming law.

could Marxism make a comeback?

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Maybe, according to this Marxist professor writing on Truthout.org.

Within the broad Marxian tradition, some strands offer both analyses and policies that differ sharply from anything offered by either neoclassical or Keynesian economics. To take perhaps the clearest example, many Marxists focus on the undemocratic position of capitalists within enterprises (individual owners and corporate boards of directors). Their decisions on whether and how to invest net revenues determine the shape of the macroeconomy for all. A minority focused on enterprise profits as “the bottom line” makes decisions impacting the jobs, incomes, debts, etc. of a majority to which it is not democratically accountable. This minority’s expectations, desires and “animal spirits” (as Keynes put it) causes instability, in the Marxian view. The policy suggestion emerging from that view focuses on a program to “democratize the enterprise” as a solution to instability. Replacing hierarchical undemocratic capitalist enterprises with democratically organized worker cooperatives – where each enterprise member has one vote in deciding key matters, such as investment decisions – is a way forward that neither neoclassical nor Keynesian economists have yet allowed to be debated in public and academic forums. We will all be better off when the current narrowness of economics is opened up to include more basic proposals for change adequate to the depth and scope of capitalism’s current problems.

I’m not sure where I “stand”, except I’d like to see more empirical testing of economic theories and less ideology. Even if we figured out which of the major economics religions is actually “the right one”, we still couldn’t expect it to pick solutions for us. It could identify a range of reasonably economically efficient solutions to a problem (and reject a lot of clearly dumb ones), but we would still have to pick one to try moving ahead with that best represented our values. But maybe with all those dumb solutions tossed out and better information at our fingertips about the range of good solutions, our messy political system would have a better chance of making good choices.