Comments on: TWoN Chapter 7

By: Laramie Sasseville

Laramie Sasseville — Thu, 28 May 2009 19:26:16 +0000

“A very poor man may be said in some sense to have a demand for a coach and six; he might like to have it; but his demand is not an effectual demand, so the commodity can never be brought to market in order to satisfy it.”

Until credit cards are issued to practically everyone, and his dog.

By: SteveAK

SteveAK — Mon, 18 May 2009 01:32:18 +0000

Ben, as a libertarian-leaning “independent” (with full understanding of the snark held within that term..)

I like SKZB’s analysis and find much edifying material on the WSWS. I think the means are more important than the ends within any philosophy. Everyone’s visions of the future may hold different utopias, but the actions each one of us takes to achieve what we think should be (and the rationalizations they make to justify them) define us more than where we want to go. I see this as common ground between disparate beliefs.

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:18:18 +0000

It would just be too funny if at the end of this review Steve decides he’s been wrong his whole life and capitalism is the one true economic model.

By: Seth

Seth — Mon, 11 May 2009 16:38:01 +0000

If a company has profits (after a reasonable return on capital) of, say, $50 million, will that be coupled with high labor rates? My experience is that if the company has around 50 employees it would be, while if it has 100,000 employees it won’t be. The extraordinary profit has to be measured per employee to determine the likely effect on labor rates.

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 11 May 2009 11:13:50 +0000

Yeah, I think you’ve got what he’s saying on page 89; that extraordinary profit should be coupled with extraordinarily high labor rates. He seems to be brushing up against profit-sharing there. Which just means he didn’t have the foresight to contemplate the robber barons of the last part of the 1800s or of the decade just ending.