Perhaps a glitch in PEN-L has made me come into the middle of this. So I'm
not sure who is who below. But I wanted to comment on the old false
argument that is pointed out by Nove -- "that the Left is misguided when it
puts too >>much emphasis on the wealth of the super-rich, on the grounds
that
>>redistributing the wealth or income of the super-rich will not go very far."
I recall William F. Buckley making that argument 20 years ago, when I used
to watch TV. It is a clever debating line but wrong. Take, say the car
manufacturing Ford family. If you divide up their profits among the poor
it would be a penny or two, or perhaps a dollar or two. Gains nothing, as
Nove is saying. But why do they have profits? Because they restrict
output of autos to keep the price high to be profitable. If instead of
redistributing what income they have, suppose that you increased output to
the level where profits would be zero. Thus the Ford family ends up with
nothing in either case but in the increased productin case there are a lot
more cars and a lot more jobs. It is the determined maintencance of
scarcity that enriches the rich and impovrishes the poor in this economy.
Gene Coyle
>At 11:22 AM 7/6/98 -0500, you wrote:
>>I have been reading Alec Nove's "Economics of Feasible Socialism Revisited"
>>and came across his argument that the Left is misguided when it puts too
>>much emphasis on the wealth of the super-rich, on the grounds that
>>redistributing the wealth or income of the super-rich will not go very far.
>>I have run across this argument before.
>
>Yes, this is a standard argument against socialism. If you divide up the
>bank accounts of the ruling class and redistributed it like Robin Hood,
>then the workers would only receive some puny sum. This is not really the
>point, however. The argument against capitalism is not just that it creates
>income inequality, but that it is an anarchic and destructive mode of
>production. Since Nove basically supports a form of the market system, it
>does not serve his ideology to accept this part of the argument. Nove's
>book seemed much more convincing when capitalism was looking so impressive
>in the early 1990s. The NY Times article I just posted should make one
>reconsider all this.
>
>What do PEN-Lers think of it? What
>>do folks think about Nove's book?
>>
>>-Robert Naiman
>
