Of course in the future every adult in the whole world will receive exactly the same weekly "allowance." It will be entirely unrelated to "work."

Here is a very lovely link containing a useful potted history of what has happened in the world of "finance" since the days of Marx.

This bit is especially good: "The expansion of . . . 'finance capital' created what Marx called 'money capitalists' - 'investors' who have no direct relationship to the actual production of goods."

This bit too: "By early 2008, the value of credit default swaps was an estimated $62 trillion - nearly five times the annual output of the U.S. economy."

In the future machines and intelligent robots will do most of the "work" that is necessary - even the construction of more and more intelligent robots! The enterprising enthusiasts will do the rest, but their allowance will be the same as the others'.

How encouraging it is to see so many socialists popping up among the members!

Well, ah, my revolution depends on persuasion and cooperation so it's almost certainly better to start with the exchange of civilised thoughts than to get people's backs up!  It's a pity I haven't time to address all your points but this struck me as requiring a response:


Surely the cutting of interest rates can only fuel inflation by discouraging saving.  Those who previously saved will be encouraged to spend their money before it becomes as worthless as the phoney money being printed to encourage spending by borrowers.  Unless, of course, we're heading for the other extreme - the one that hasn't happened in living memory - of wage and price deflation leaving people who were depending on modestly increasing incomes to service their mortgages, loans etc from a dwindling income while the value of their meagre assets declines through price cuts and negative interest rates.  Wasn't the 1926 strike about wage cuts in just such conditions - and wasn't it followed by the worst depression before the one that seems to be on its way?

Cutting interest rates may discourage new saving (and existing savers) but doesn't necessarily increrase inflation; in the present circumstances, it seems likely that the deflationary pressures upon oil and food that we are now encountering will outstrip any inflationary risk that might otherwise attach to interest rate decreases. As to "those who previously saved", there are precious few of those, since not many people have been able to afford to save; the very bleatings about people's lack of investment into pensions of which we hard so much in the recent past demonstrate this. As to the rest, I think that you're quite near the mark here about 1926, but I think that what we are about to exprience is of such magnitude that comparisons with that earlier one may not tell us all that much. The bottom line, I believe, remains the sheer lack of collateral to back up the inordinately vast amounts of cash in the system.

Is it? It's interesting, without a doubt but, as I observed earlier, whilst accepting the importance of those predictions to which you referred before, it seems to me that the extent to which anyone can usefully look to the work of any 19th century writer for all the answers to a raft of economic and financial problems that are very much of today's world remains questionable.

It seems unlikely that many will read them - very few actually have - but just having the writings of Marx on the shelf is useful.  It's got to be better to take notice of people like Marx (or Marshall or Keynes) who made some effort to examine how the system actually works rather than to assume that our leaders know what's best for.  For me, the message of Marx is that no guru has the answers - we have to provide them for ourselves - but just look how many questions there are: three volumes and counting!  The main lesson of Marx - and the one we most often ignore - is not even his own invention, but his favourite motto, de omnibus dubitandem (? everything must be questioned).  Some modern writers like Schumpeter & Galbraith have warned against the Panglossian complacency of recent decades: the way we've swallowed the, frankly superstitious, notion that the market won't let anything go seriously wrong.  We were invited to doubt that the boom/bust cycle was inherent in the market and many of us began to have just such doubts - or to imagine that the highs & lows were minor inconveniences.  We are now, I suspect, about to see how wrong we were.  Marx could have told us.

That's all from me today.  I'm off to London to see Stephen Hough.

Fair point - and I'm not for one moment suggesting that his ideas no longer have any use. The article to which you directed us quotes from Eric Hobsbawm, whose long and distinguished career as a historian and credentials as an unwavering socialist are sufficiently well known to render the author's patronising description of him as one of a group of an "all-but-forgotten Marxist philosophers" as untenable as it is gratuituos; "globalisation, which is implicit in capitalism", Hobsbawm is cited as saying on BBC Radio 4, "not only destroys the heritage and tradition but it is incredibly unstable, it operates through a series of crises, and I think this has been recognised to be the end of this particular era". To ascertain whether the blame for our present financial ills can be laid wholly at the door of capitalism one should perhaps therefore take a leal out of Mr Hobsbawm's book and ask oneself whether capitalism alone brought about what we understand as globalisation and, at the same time, we must also be clear in our minds what is meant by globalisation. He undoubtedly has a point - and an important one - but not one that strikes me as sounding the death-knell for capitalism in all its conceivable manifestations. I have earlier alluded (albeit not in so many words) to the "big brother" aspect of capitalism - the overbearing governments, corporations, financial institutions, etc. - but I do not believe that this kind of thing has been born purely of capitalism any more than it is exclusive to it. Financial greed is one thing; greed and lust for power and control is another. Of course they often go hand in hand (not to mention hand in glove) but not necessarily always so, I think. Mr Hobsbawm is right to suggest that an era may be nearing its end - and even if he were not so, it arguably ought to be - but, to me, that simply means that the worst, most corrupt, most harmful and indefensible aspects of the misapplication and abuse of capitalism have been clearly revealed to almost all of us now and it is becoming more widely recognised that it is obviously high time for a fundamental rethink for the future in order to try to avoid the recurrence of any such catastrophes.

Richard, I know that you have different emphases on this and I respect you for that, but I still ask you if you can explain what kind of financial system you would advocate in place of what we do at least agree is the woefully inadequate one that we have now.