Economics
Lutheran Economics (2.2). The Crisis of Capital (Sterilization Camps): (Introduction to the Theory of Absolute Overpopulation)
"It seems to be a law of nature that the poor are in a certain degree imprudent (that is to say, so imprudent that they were born into the world without a golden spoon in their mouth), and that there are always some who occupy the humblest, dirtiest, and most degrading offices in society. Thus the fund of human happiness is greatly increased, the more refined are relieved of their cares, and are unmolested in the more noble occupations, and so on.
The Poor Laws have a tendency to destroy the harmony and beauty, the equality and order of the system which God and Nature have instituted in the world. "--" Treatise on the Poor Laws "
"We have discussed the Malthusian theory several times. Let us now briefly recapitulate the main conclusions of this theory: that the earth is eternally overpopulated, and therefore eternally full of poverty, want, and immorality; that it is the destiny, the eternal destiny, that there are too many people in the world, and that, therefore, men are divided into classes; that some are richer, educated, and virtuous, while others are poorer, wretched, ignorant, and immoral. It follows from this the practical conclusion (which Malthus himself made) that charity and the Poor Fund are really pointless, since they only maintain the 'superfluous' and encourage them to multiply, while the wages of the rest of the population are reduced by their competition. It is equally pointless for the Poor to work for the poor, since only a certain quantity of the product of labour can find a market, and the employment of one unemployed worker must necessarily cause the unemployment of another who is now employed. In other words, the enterprise of the Poor Fund is developed at the expense of private industry. The problem, therefore, is not to feed the 'superfluous', but to find some means of reducing the superfluous as far as possible. Malthus simply declares that it is utterly absurd that every man born into the world has a right to the means of subsistence. He quotes the poet: 'The poor man comes to Nature's banquet, but can find no empty plate.' Malthus adds: 'Then Nature bids him go away.
bids
him
to
Because before he was born, he did not ask if society would accept him. This theory has now become the pet theory of all the real bourgeoisie in England, and this is perfectly understandable: it is convenient to them, you see, and it is in many respects practical in the circumstances of the present state of affairs. Since the problem was not to make use of the 'surplus population' or to turn the 'surplus population' into a useful population, but to starve them to death in the simplest way possible and prevent them from having too many children at the same time, things were naturally very simple. However, there was still a condition — the 'surplus population' had to admit that they were surplus and be willing to starve to death. But although the benevolent bourgeoisie had taken pains to convince the workers of their own uselessness, as yet there was no prospect of success. On the contrary, the proletarians firmly believe that they have industrious hands, and that they are the indispensable people, and that it is the idle rich Mr. Capitalists who are really superfluous. "— Friedrich Engels
Maozhu Xi once said that all kinds of ideas are branded with the mark of a higher class. This sentence had certain limitations, but it was also very philosophical. In the study of natural science, there was no such thing as proletarian physics and bourgeois physics, or proletarian chemistry and bourgeois chemistry. But in the study of the humanities and social sciences, different class ideas did indeed represent different class understandings of human society — different class interests, and therefore different understandings of human society. These ideas were not merely limited to the understanding of the world, but were bound to guide the corresponding class in its participation in the transformation of society. Economics, as the analysis and guidance of human production, distribution, exchange, and consumption, could not escape this' mark '.
Back to the point.
Now that the crisis had arisen, how was it to be explained? How it was to be explained would involve how it was to be solved, and how it was to be solved would involve the interests of all parties. So all kinds of ideas came to the fore. Every man's idea was in the interests of his class, every explanation corresponded to a corresponding solution, and every solution was to safeguard the interests of his class. Whether it could be cured of the economic crisis was another matter.
At the top of the pyramid was often the class with vested interests, and any social change would inevitably violate their vested interests. Maintaining the status quo was in their best interest, so their ideas were often relatively conservative, and their explanation of the world was that everything was perfect and reasonable, or as long as the status quo was maintained and everyone knew their place, the entire society would be reasonable. All contradictions would be reduced to nothing, and even if they existed, they would be individual cases, or personal problems of the parties involved, and the parties involved would have to bear the responsibility themselves. It had nothing to do with society, and society did not need to make any changes. In their view, any attempt at change would destroy the perfection of society, and it would be a disaster for all members. It was not only a disaster for Nana, but also a disaster for Luther — the interests of Luther were represented by Nana.
The earliest form of a concentration camp was the poorhouse in England. Many Luther were gathered together and forced to live according to gender and age. The work was heavy, the living conditions were crowded, and they were malnourished. Without the written approval of the guards, they were not allowed to leave, and they were not allowed to receive visitors. Once they entered, they would never be able to leave. They had come here in order to systematically reduce their numbers. Because they were useless to society, they needed to be eliminated constantly. Here, they had to do the heavy physical work of convicts, they had to forget their kennels and puppies, they had to live like dogs, and they had to die like dogs. This was not a prison, not Auschwitz, not Dachau, not the Gulag, not the World War II Japanese concentration camp in the United States, but the poorhouse in England. The difference between the poorhouse and the Nazi concentration camp was that the prisoners here were not Jews or political opponents of the Nazis, but poor, unemployed workers who had nowhere to go, the Luther of the capitalist world.
The legal basis for the poorhouse was the Poor Law Amendment, also known as the New Poor Law. The idea of locking up the unemployed Luther came from a clergyman. This priest was none other than the famous Malthusian.
Malthus' population theory started from two abstract premises: first, food was necessary for human survival; second, interspersed food was necessary, but almost always maintained the status quo. Of the two, he argued, the force of population growth was greater than that of the land for the production of the means of subsistence. The population, when unhindered, increases geometrically, that is, at the rate of 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512; the means of subsistence increases at the rate of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. When population growth exceeds the means of subsistence, poverty and vice naturally occur to limit population growth.
In the second edition of the Principle of Population, Malthus changed the three points he had originally proposed: population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence; as long as the means of subsistence increase, population will increase steadily, unless it is checked by very strong and significant inhibitions; and these inhibitions, and those inhibitions which check the superior forces of population and keep their results at the same level as the means of subsistence, can all be summed up in moral moderation, vice, and poverty. Malthus proposed that people who could not support their children should not marry, and that they should remain chaste until marriage. He argued that, without moral restraint, the poverty and vice that result from population growth exceeding the means of subsistence could not be avoided.
Hitler's sterilization program, which involved all kinds of people who had been diagnosed by doctors as suffering from various diseases, or from inferior races, was linked to race and physiology. Malthus wanted Luther to be sterilized, directly linked to the level of income. Do not marry without money, do not have sex! The right of a man and his descendants to survive was directly linked to the extent of his pockets.
Fortunately, Malthus did not propose the forced castration of the male Luther. Otherwise, if he had been castrated and his economic position had improved in the future, would he still have had to have the operation restored? If he had not been restored, would the future Luther, the present Luther, have lost the right to pass on his property? Would Luther's sterilization, or not, not the future Luther's descendants, not the future Luther? Since it was overpopulation, why did they only let Luther and not sterilize him? Or, according to Malthus, Luther would be Luther, and would never be the future Luther?
Malthus also proposed the theory of alienation of profit and the theory of the third party. Because of the existence of the "third party," consisting of landlords, bureaucrats, and priests, the profits of the capitalists were paid, and the crisis of overproduction was avoided due to insufficient social consumption.
Malthus's theory could be summed up in two points: first, there was a large amount of unemployment and poverty in society, and second, Luther had too many children. With so many people needing employment, where would there be so many jobs for them? Luther would have to lose their jobs. Second, the clergy, bureaucrats, and landlords could consume the surplus products, which was an important and beneficial part of the social economy. This was his explanation of the economic crisis. According to his explanation of the economic crisis, the way to solve the crisis was logical: to solve the surplus of labor, sterilize Luther, to solve the surplus of products, improve the treatment of the clergy, bureaucrats, and landlords.
No class would describe itself as a parasite. Malthus was a priest, so naturally, he would not describe the monks as parasites. On the contrary, he would describe himself as a person of special value to society. The value of the clergy was to consume the surplus products, which was a contribution to the capitalist society.
Since there were surplus products, why couldn't they be consumed by Luther, who produced the products, but only by the clergy, the landlords, and the bureaucrats? Malthus's explanation was that Luther would have more children, which would lead to social poverty. Then did the clergy, the landlords, and the bureaucrats not have children? Did they not lead to social poverty by having children? Was this because they were nobler than Luther, or was it because Malthus himself was a clergy? In fact, pigs could accomplish the task of consuming the surplus products better than Malthus and make a greater contribution. In other words, Malthus was inferior to pigs in this regard. In fact, without people working, society could not function for a day; without people who could not produce and only consume, society could still function. It was not the poor who had to work day and night that needed to be fed, but the idle rich who had nothing to do, such as Malthus.
It was very simple to prove that Malthus's explanation was nonsense. It was obvious that the surplus of production led to the unemployment of workers. How could it be that the shortage of production led to the unemployment of workers? During the capitalist economic crisis, it was not that there was not enough production, which led to the surplus of workers, but that there was a lot of equipment idle and workers unemployed. It was not that there was not enough consumer goods in society because there was an overpopulation, but because workers were unemployed and did not have enough purchasing power, which led to the surplus of products. The so-called shortage of production led to the poverty of the population, which was Malthus's brainchild, was completely at odds with reality. It was not that there were no products in the real world, but that most workers did not have the money to buy them. It was not that there was no production, but that the factories had closed down and the production materials were idle. Malthus did not care about the reality of the situation and relied entirely on his own imagination to explain the economic crisis. The purpose of his explanation was to settle on the solution he hinted at – to increase the treatment of the clergy. He wanted to increase the treatment of himself, and he wanted to rope in the landlords and bureaucrats as political allies. As for Luther, he was a useless person and should be gradually reduced in population. The standard of reduction was the degree of inflation of the wallet.
Although it was nonsense that did not match the facts, capitalists liked Malthus's theory. Malthus's explanation was that the unemployment and poverty of capitalist society was not caused by unfair distribution, but by the law of population. Therefore, poverty was Luther's own problem and had nothing to do with stability. Malthus strongly opposed the Poor Law of the time and proposed that poverty relief for Luther would only stimulate more poverty. If the government improved Luther's life, it would only cause Luther to have more children, which would eventually cause Luther to fall into poverty again. The real solution to poverty was to sterilize the unemployed Luther to achieve the goal of reducing the population of Luther. His theory also proposed that only by maintaining the private ownership of property and assuming the responsibility of raising their own children, people could control themselves and not have too many children. Therefore, the private ownership of property came from the domination of the "natural law of population" of human nature. It was eternal and could not be overthrown.
The most fundamental point of these specious views was: First, the poverty of the workers had nothing to do with the capitalists. Second, the government could not use the capitalists' money to relieve the workers. Third, private property was necessary to maintain social stability and was eternal and inviolable. Capitalists' acceptance of these views did not depend on whether the views were true or not, but whether the conclusions were in their interests. Therefore, capitalists of course supported Malthus's nonsense, and they supported it enthusiastically.
It was not clear whether the clergy were treated better in English history, but the gradual implementation of the hidden extinction of Luther through the law was something that happened.
In 1834, the English Parliament passed a new law to replace the Poor Law of 1601 – the Poor Law Amendment, known as the "New Poor Law." The old Poor Law was relatively lenient towards the starving, and it had always been slow to take. The passage at the beginning of this article was part of a clergyman's famous book, "On the Poor Law" (1786), which criticized the Poor Law. There is another famous passage in the work of this servant of God: "To compel labour by law is to cause too much trouble, violence, and clamour; but hunger is not only a peaceful, silent, and constant pressure, it is the most natural stimulus to industry and labour, and evokes the greatest energy." This was the fundamental reason why Jonah had a grudge against the Poor Law. If Luther was not starved to death, and they were on the verge of starving to death, how could they work so hard? The more abject the unemployed are, the more motivated the workers are. They are willing to work more and demand less in order to keep their place. (Of course, this is only one possibility. Another is that the proletariat is united against the Poor Law Amendment. The meat-eater is despicable, and the Poor Law Amendment would not be called the Poor Law Amendment.)
The New Poor Law abolished "extramural relief," abolished all monetary and material relief for the unemployed, and allowed only one form of relief, which was to house them in a training house. The poor could only receive food relief when they entered the "workhouse." The workhouse was, in fact, the concentration camp mentioned earlier. The work was heavy, the pay was poor, the food was bad, and the accommodation was cramped. The people were separated by age and sex in order to achieve sterilization. They were not allowed to go out or receive visitors without the written permission of the overseer.
The Poor Law Amendment had arranged for the Luther to come here in order to gradually exterminate them. The new law of 1834 had the idea of rounding up the useless in society and gradually reducing the size of the population. This predated the Nazis by a hundred years. Compared with the Nazi sterilization of the Jews, the criterion here was not race, but property. The right to live, to bear children, was directly linked to property. This was the capitalist's implicit genocide of the unemployed, and the criterion was property. Those without property depended on whether the capitalist was willing to employ them. If they could not serve the capitalist, they were gradually and systematically eliminated. When workers were needed, they were employed. When not needed, they were sent to concentration camps.
The poor were like cattle, and if there was not so much food, the number of cattle had to be reduced. It was like the nomads slaughtering large numbers of cattle before winter to save food for the winter. Although there was no blatant large-scale slaughter, it was a relatively "civilized" sterilization. The worker lives only to multiply capital and only when the interests of the ruling class require him to live. [Note 1] The worker is directly the slave of capital, and the number of slaves fluctuates directly according to the elasticity of the demands of capital. In the face of profit and money, the bourgeois government is greedier and crueler than the feudal monarchical government.
The danger of thinking is in putting it into action. Dangerous thinking leads to dangerous action. In every society there are people who are regarded by the ruling class as useless trash, even vermin. The control of these vermin and the gradual reduction of their numbers is, from the point of view of the ruling class, the dream of the ruling class. The danger is that the criterion for defining vermin depends only on the interests of the ruling class. Malthus was the first to put forward the idea openly and to provide a rationale for it. The gradual elimination of those who are useless to the ruling class is not the idea of a clergyman, and yet it comes from a clergyman.
The workers of the English Chartist movement gave the finger to Malthus and the new poor law. Goddamn the Net! The English workers at the time of the Chartist movement directly proposed the abolition of the new poor law. You bureaucrats want to raise wages and lock us up in the workhouse. You ought to be locked up first.
But the capitalists did not accept Malthus's theory in its entirety. The workers deserve to starve to death, but this is because they have more children of their own. This has nothing to do with the capitalists, and this is something the capitalists welcome. The consumption of the superfluous product by the clergymen was in favour of the capitalists. The capitalists certainly could not tolerate it. It was the first part, not the second, that the capitalists wanted. Ricardo and Malthus had a long debate and friendship, and on his deathbed gave Malthus part of his estate. The friendship was because Ricardo agreed that the workers deserved to starve. The debate was because Ricardo disagreed with Malthus's proposal of the contribution of the clergymen, bureaucrats, and landlords to the economy.
Malthus admitted that the capitalist system was inherently prone to underconsumption, that the society of workers and capitalists could not consume all the product, and that there was a need for a third party to consume the superfluous product. He implied that underconsumption could be overcome by increasing the treatment of the clergymen, bureaucrats, and landlords. Say's law, by contrast, denied even this.
Rothernomics (2.5) — The Crisis of Capital (The Great Devil): (Introduction to Keynesianism)
"In the long run, we are all dead." — John Maynard Keynes
Keynes was the second great devil in economics. He was not number one, because Marx was number one.
In 1936, Keynes, in his book The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money,
General
Theory
of
Employment
,
Interest
and
Money, or The General Theory, argued that under capitalism, not everything that could be produced could be sold. A large part of the product was destined to be unconsumable. The amount of unconsumable product increased with the gap between the rich and the poor, which inevitably led to capitalists reducing production and unemployment. In other words, the greater the gap between the rich and the poor, the greater the unemployment problem. In order to save capitalism, the superfluous product needed government help to consume or even waste it.
Before Keynes's General Theory, the dominant theory in economics had been "free markets, free management, free competition, automatic regulation, automatic equilibrium." Any government intervention would only upset the equilibrium and cause trouble. In other words, after Hoover was ousted for inaction and Roosevelt's New Deal had been in place for more than three years, Hoover was right and Roosevelt was wrong in economic theory. Any attempt to intervene in the economy would be criticized by economic theory and would inevitably bear the pressure of public opinion based on orthodox economic theory.
In any other era, Keynes's theory would not have stood out so much. In fact, before Keynes, more than one economist suggested that the gap between the rich and the poor was closely related to the economic crisis, but these people did not reach Keynes's influence. This was like Kang Youwei's "A Test of Confucius." In any other era, it would have been buried in the tide of history. It only appeared on the eve of the Reform of 1898 that it left a mark in history.
The Great Crisis that began in 1929 almost drove capitalism to a dead end. This crisis was different not only because of its unprecedented breadth and depth, but also because it lasted for a long time. Unlike the previous crises that came suddenly and naturally recovered, this crisis not only did not recover after three years, but worsened. 1932 became the worst year in the history of capitalism. In April 1930, the first federal unemployment census in the history of the United States, there were about three million unemployed people. At the beginning of 1932, there were more than 15 million to 17 million unemployed people, about 15% of the United States population at the time. In September 1932, Fortune magazine estimated that, excluding 11 million rural households, there were 34 million adult men, women, and children in the United States without any income. If you are interested, you can read "Glory and Dreams" to see how miserable most Americans were at the time.
Not only the United States, but the world was full of crisis and turmoil. In order to divert the conflict, Japan launched the "September 18" Incident, invaded the northeast of China, and established a puppet regime. After the economic crisis in Weimar Germany, class conflicts quickly sharpened. The influence of the Communist Party grew rapidly, and the bourgeoisie could no longer rule with a parliamentary system. On January 30, 1933, Weimar Republic President Hindenburg appointed Hittler as Prime Minister in charge of the cabinet. Since then, Nazi established a fascist dictatorship in Weimar Germany, military power rapidly expanded, unemployment disappeared, and society flourished. Twelve years of crazy development began. It could be said that the Great Crisis of 1929 doomed China to a full-scale anti-Japanese war and a world war that began in 1939.
At the same time, the Soviet Union began to implement a five-year plan in 1928. By 1933, the Soviet Union had established a basic foundation for industrialization. When the Great Patriotic War broke out, Germany was surprised to find that the T34 tanks produced by the Soviet Union were better than the German No.3 and No.4 tanks, and the production was astonishing. Without large-scale industrialization, the fate of the Soviets would have been similar to that of the Sioux.
Comparing people to each other would lead to death, and comparing goods would lead to throwing away. In contrast to the Soviet Union, where there was almost no unemployment and the economy was developing rapidly, every Western politician felt great pressure from the capitalist system.
According to traditional economic theory, as long as nothing was done, the economy would improve by itself. Hoover believed this, but the unemployment rate not only did not decrease, it increased. (By the way, those who insist that the government should not interfere should really recall that period of history.) Finally, Roosevelt kicked him out of office. When Roosevelt came to office, he was also confused. He did not know what to do, but he knew what had to be done. Roosevelt implemented the New Deal for three years, and the economy improved. But at this time, some people began to oppose Roosevelt. Roosevelt later said that in the summer of 1933, an old gentleman wearing a silk hat fell into the water at the edge of the jetty. He could not swim. A friend ran down the jetty, jumped into the water, and rescued him, but the silk hat was washed away. When the old gentleman woke up, he thanked his friend profusely for saving his life. But today, three years later, the old gentleman reprimanded his friend for losing his hat.
Although Roosevelt did not appreciate Keynes, Keynes provided legitimacy for government intervention in the economy all over the world. He provided a theoretical basis for government intervention in the economy: the market often failed to perfect itself, and the "invisible hand" was not omnipotent. It needed the help of the "visible hand."
The theoretical system of Keynesianism centered on solving the problem of employment, and the logical starting point of employment theory was the principle of effective demand. Its basic idea was that the amount of employment in a society depended on effective demand. The so-called effective demand was the total demand when the total supply price and the total demand price of goods reached a balance. When the total demand price was greater than the total supply price, the social demand for goods exceeded the supply of goods, and the capitalists would hire more workers and expand production. On the other hand, when the total demand price was less than the total supply price, there would be a glut. The capitalists would either be forced to sell their goods at a reduced price, or let some of their goods remain unsold, or reduce production because they could not achieve a minimum profit. Therefore, the amount of employment depended on the balance between the total supply and the total demand. Because production costs and normal profits did not fluctuate much in the short term, the output that the capitalists were willing to supply did not change much, and the total supply was basically stable. In this way, the amount of employment actually depended on the total demand, and the total demand that balanced the total supply was the effective demand.
You've already exceeded your reading limit for today. If you want to read more, please log in.
Login
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
