I've been reading a lot of Marxist literature lately, explaining why capitalism/neoliberalism/etc...

I've been reading a lot of Marxist literature lately, explaining why capitalism/neoliberalism/etc. is bad and destroying the world. They seem to make sense, but I feel like I need to read some pro-capitalism literature to "balance things out." Especially literature that specifically refutes Marxist claims. Any recs? Surely capitalism isn't completely evil.

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward
classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/sombart_werner/Jews_and_modern_capitalism/sombart_jews_capitalism.pdf
openstax.org/subjects/
atimes.com/article/world-markets-crash-except-china/
people.bu.edu/tboas/neoliberalism.pdf
olivermhartwich.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/neoliberalism.pdf
eprints.lse.ac.uk/60471/1/__lse.ac.uk_storage_LIBRARY_Secondary_libfile_shared_repository_Content_Venugopal, R_Neoliberalism as concept_Venugopal_Neoliberalism as concept_2015.pdf
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>balance things out
>surely capitalism isn't completely evil
my god

What did he mean by this?

>balance things out
imagine being this deep in the trashcan

Just read any basic econ book.

Anything by Milton Friedman.

You could watch a Yaron Brook video or two on the youtubes although imo he's to economics what Shapiro is to politics. Still interesting for basic concepts before diving straight into actual economic textbooks. Which is pretty much what you'll have to resort reading if you want veritable refutation.

Economic 'science' upon which capitalistic principles are based is mostly quantitative rather the qualitative mumbo of communism & and its little sister socialism.

Check Hayek and Keynes. Both are interesting because, while they support capitalist, they do so in very different ways. Note that they tend to be a lot more technical than typical Marxist literature so they can be dry if you have no formal training in economics.

He is saying capitalism is his god?

Friedman is probably too derivative for a first approach.

This is better for a start.

>yeah bro commies dont know economics xddddddddd
Kys

>Any recs?
An history book

This. Here's a little chart. It's good to learn about some non-marxist ideas sometimes.

Just don't forget who sent ya.

You can balance it out by watching some poor workers and shit, I guess.

Be warned that (((they))) control both sides

This is autistic. None of this refutes Marxist ideas.

It's true though. It's also true of pro-capitalists. Most people delve into political economy with zero knowledge on basic economics because it's perceived as boring.

This chart is shit. Austrians aren't even the main pro-capitalist current in modern political economy.

Anyone advocating for a central planned economy is either ignorant or a retard. Period.

>None of this refutes Marxist ideas.
Marxist ideas refute themselves.

Not all of them argue for central planning. There are proposed alternatives with communes acting like individuals with each others in a kind of simili-market.

Besides rejecting planning out of hand is a dogmatic approach. It's just a mode of resource allocation. You can argue that it's less efficient than markets because the administrative costs are enormous. That doesn't mean that those costs cannot be diminished by technical solutions such as advanced IT systems, making planning a viable alternative.

this is you.

Like most everyone was saying, check out von mises criticism of socialism. It's a little all over the place but he does have some interesting criticism from the austrian side. Standard an cap literature like friedman and rothbard would also do the trick.

Or if you want something from the marxian side that's better ingratiated into economic theory, try roemer, kliman or frolich.

Also check out anwar shaikh. his book deals with the problems of every school of economics and supplants it with a closed version of marxist economics backed with empirical evidence.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward

Sounds like you're aiming to beat the high score, eh kiddo?

It's true though

my personal favorite is Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development by Antony Sutton. any of the three volumes will do.

they're not really "refutations" of Marxism, just a catalog of what a centrally-planned economy looks like

if you really want some anti-Marxist economics I'd suggest Carl Menger or Murray Rothbard (Rothbard basically took what Mises wrote and simplified it. Mises wrote like Marx, doorstoppers)

Capitalism was good coming from feudalism and evil when we can finally upgrade to socialism. Consequently, socialism will become evil when the next stage appears after ironing out the contradictions of socialism. This keeps happening until full communism.

communism is our final form
capitalism is just a step in the right direction towards communism
sooner or later people will go against the class system.
just take a closer look at rising disparity between rich and poor, this wont last for long.

>Capitalism
Too vague of a term really.

central planning is the only way, brainlet

How are you two functioning in the real world?

On capitalism
classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/sombart_werner/Jews_and_modern_capitalism/sombart_jews_capitalism.pdf

Ever read Oskar Lange, idiot?
Stop pretending everyone in economics falls for the free markets meme. The discipline is extremely ideological and opposed to dissent, no shit it only has ideologues remaining economists.

Not all Capitalism are equal
>Michel Albert described a similar concept, "Rhine capitalism". He compared the so-called "neo-American model" of a capitalistic market economy, introduced by the administrations of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher with what he called "Rhine capitalism", present in Germany, France and in some of the Northern European economies.

>While the neo-American model builds largely on the ideas of Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman, Rhine capitalism, according to Albert, has its foundations on publicly organized social security. Albert analyzes the Rhenish model as the more equitable, efficient, and less violent one. However, according to Albert, complex psychological phenomena and the functioning of the press lets the American model appear more attractive and dynamic to the general public.

Mises' Socialism is a worthwhile read, since he treats it seriously as an economic system and identifies the central issue (calculation). However, that issue has since been solved by modern compting technology, as shown by Cockshott, Cottrell & Co., so it's basically a moot point. I haven't yet seen seen liberal economists respond to the formidable arguments raised by contemporary Marxist economists, they all seem to be stuck in the USSR.

Are you sure you're reading Marx? Not just the manifesto? Because only the manifesto talks about good and evil and all that pleb shit. Rest of his work is an objective analysis of capitalism, he couldn't care less that the exploitation of workers was evil, he only cared about the implications of it. Marx is incredibly insightful, if someone who bashes Marx on materialist terms (such as a capitalist or whatever) you can be SURE he never read his books. The problem with Marx is that he's a materialist. Although life seems materialistic to an extreme in western society, it's not what it's all about.

You know you have to be 18 to post here, right?

Historical materialism is very different from scientific materialism. IMO the biggest contribution of Marx is introducing a basic rigour into analyzing social phenomena and processes of change. He was living in a time when people were increasingly materialistic about physics, but held to ridiculous myths about social science, like seeing capitalism as an emanation of immanent human characteristics - this is basically Platonism, but seen as acceptable because it's a socio-historical instead of physical outlook. But it's even worse being unrigorous about social phenomena since mass human agency is capable of directing them throughout history, which he clearly saw.

Pearls before swines, most of the people here believe the EU is neoliberal

I can confirm I am ignorant of economics. I am an anarchy enthusiast. I know ecology very well however and I know it is better at explaining economies than economics. Of course there are particular things about capital, interest and whatnot I don't get but I understand how complex systems with living agents work and organize.

I think you might be an idiot

Okay
State your hypothesis

I know one system therefore I probably know another without any noteable basis of comparison between them is an intellectually untenable position

>surely capitalism isn't completely evil
user... I don't know how to tell you this...

To be fair the technical parts of economics is indeed boring as fuck. The maths used in economics have none of the fun factor of the maths used in physics.

If you actually read anything and this wasn't just the nth politics bait thread you'd know no Marxist ever made the claim of capitalism being "evil".

>all these cucks implying liberal democratic capitalism isn't the greatest thing to humanity since the dawn of agriculture
Lmaoing at ur lifes, lads, most of you would be starving peasants or forced laborers if it weren't for this great liberating force that allows people to satisfy their bodily cravings for gratification. Now I can just open my Apple, Inc (DOW: AAPL) MacBook Air®, bust a few nutties to some slut with serious untreated mental disorders on the beautiful Retina® and then eat 200% of my needed caloric intake, sleep and do it all again.

>MacBook Air
>Retina

Fug, you got me

This but unironically

What are you talking about? economic systems are ecological systems. There are no real differences in how a economy or an ecological community operate, actually economies are just abstractions from communities, like a trophic web.
There are some minor superficial differences that might confuse the niave.
There are so called "socio-ecological systems" which I don't believe in because that is redundant and anthropocentric, I have studied them nonetheless, as well as actor networks, games and other things that are used by economics. Only from the much broader and more applicable reference of ecology and ethology
This is part of a larger trend of the life sciences replacing the utter failures of the ridiculous anachronism that is the humanities. Anything that involves living things interacting is ecology.
>This betrays your complete ignorance of ecology. Not only that but you clearly don't have a good grasps of economics as a field if you don't get the general applicability of complex systems.
I am okay with a complete psued thinking I am an idiot.

>supply and demand do not exist
His iq is room temperature

I agree with the other anons here about reading econ textbooks, Friedman etc. to understand the ideological standpoint of liberal economics. If you really wanna blow your mind and get out of the 19th century "left wing" politics trap I recommend checking out Adorno, Foucault (ignore that the SJWs love him, most don't even begin to understand him), Baudrillard and Clouscard (unfortunately Clouscard isn't translated, his developments on dialectics were pretty good and led to interesting conclusions that most Marxists and even post-Marxists today would be too afraid to say, such as that the only authentic means of resisting global capital is reverting to economic populist nationalism). I'm not an expert of any of these guys by any means but their work really challenged my half-baked pseudo-communist worldview.

Capitalism ain't evil, it's just amoral.

econ textbook, tons of free ones out there
openstax.org/subjects/

>What if instead of using money we valued objects by their inherent value
>Which is decided upon how long it took to produce said item and it's usefulness to society
>What if we just abolished wages and had the workers own his own means of production so he is entitled to the full profits of his labor
>Muh Spectre of gommunism
>Supply and demand don't exist
Yeah how about no

I'll take a large shake and...actually, no. Can I see the manager, young man?
Does he know you're spreading marxist's crap in his place of business?

No, I am merely humble enough not to apply my area of expertise (which is biological networks) to other areas without any basis for the assumption that one applies to the other. That is what you are doing here, hubristically applying one to the other without any hard data to say that the comparison is apt. You betray your lack of any scientific training or indeed higher education beyond undergraduate level.

Can someone explain the chart in the top right to me?

>No, I am merely humble enough not to apply my area of expertise (which is biological networks) to other areas without any basis for the assumption that one applies to the other.
Coward
>applying one to the other without any hard data to say that the comparison is apt.
>Hard data for a conceptual analysis
wtf lol. I really do hope you have an area of expertise because you would deify how autistic science has become about quantification and statistics. Still, I doubt that to be the case. Networks are present in economic systems, complex dynamic systems with living agents are what they are, econmic systems are exactly those. You should have absolutely no problem applying your knowledge to thinking about economies.
It seems my point went completely over your head. I am ignorant about economics. I conceptualize economies from the reference of ecology. Which is a perfectly fine way to think of economies. I argue that ecology is the paradigmatically superior way to study economies. I understand well that there isn't much scientific research published about this, but as I mentioned earlier it's happening more and more. Scientific research of which's existence does not matter as this is the realm of the philsophy of science.
Furthermore many parts of ecology are directly applicable to economies, hiearchy theory, patch dynamics, biodiversity, reslience and adaptive capacity. This gets even more applicable when we start to talk about insights from how ecosystems are modeled which use the same methods economics, that is something you should know well if you are actually a network scientist. If you don't get that math isnt particular, you need to start over. Again this is all conceptual and has nothing to do with data.

There is your problem. You do not understand economics as a data driven field. You can apply your theories to economics all day, without the data to back it up within the context of economics it's all pseudery, and nobody with any real grounding in economics will take you seriously.

>Communism
>Getting away with the class system
Nice one

Hayek and Mises spent a large part of their career clearing up common misconceptions and trying to get to the truth about Liberty and Capitalism.

>I've been reading a lot of Marxist literature lately
I hope you find an way back

>the "real world"
spooky

Just read Sowell's Basic Economics. It is clearly written and he dismantles the Marxist economic theory with logical and empirical analysis. It is the best introduction to economics as he does not use any jargon or graphs, but writes to help you understand instead. The jargon he does use he spends whole chapters defining and explaining, and debunking myths surrounding those concepts. Many accuse him of being biased towards conservatism but he is only biased insofar as he proves logically and empirically that free market capitalism works better than any other system at distributing scarce resources which have alternative uses.

May I suggest:
> Liberalism, by Mises
Particularly Chapter 2, but definitely the introduction on Liberalism and Capitalism.
> The Anti-Capitalist Mentality, by Mises
May add some clarity and a nice perspective considering your roots
> The Constitution of Liberty, by Hayek
This has great chapters on modern marxism, capitalism, the liberty movement and how it all links together. Including a whole chapter on Hayek's nobel prize winning ideas about the use of knowledge in society and the limits of central planning. (the beauty of spontaneous voluntary order)

These guys both write in completely different ways. Mises is cold, hard, extremely rational. If he has an idea about what is true he will shove the logic down your throat and if there's an idea that he sees as untrue he will dismantle it piece by piece.

Hayek on the other hand doesn't have that kind of unwavering certainty, in stead he likes to play with ideas even in his books. You'll feel like you're going on the journey of thinking these things through with the author so you might find one more enjoyable than the other but both are phenominal. Glhf.

I would argue that reading Hayek is a good idea, but avoid Mises and the other Austrians. They are correct about most things but they get it painfully wrong on Keynes' idea of the paradox of thrift.

Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt is another great economics primer, though it uses some jargon so read Sowell first.

Communism only workout against true capitalism, and what we have now it's not full capitalism.
But soon...

Just kill yourself instead.

It's better to be dead than red.

Even if you disagree with Austrian economics in general, it's hard to go passed these guys. They dedicated large parts of their careers to defending capitalism/liberalism and wrestling with marxist/facist ideas. There aren't many with such a wide body of work that suit the OPs questions and perspective I reckon.

Just read Basic Economics you pleb then you might have a *gasp* basic understanding of economics.

Again, I'm not talking about economics and never claimed to be.
I'm not making any claims about how an economy works, I am talking about what an economy.
Do go ahead and tell me how statistical analysis could possibly substantiate my claims.
Like wtf is this bait? What's next? Do you want me to to use to gather data on tomatoes and use that to infer wether they are a fruit or a vegetable?
If everyone with any real grounding in economics is a complete airhead like you are I'm pretty happy that I have avoided it.

Don't actually read Milton and the liberals. They're not doing economic science, they are willfully muddying the pool to preserve their ideology.

Capitalism doesn't even have to be defended. Marx says the following:
>It is that which is held against him [Ricardo], it is his unconcern about "human beings," and his having an eye solely for the development of the productive forces, whatever the cost in human beings and capital-values — it is precisely that which is the important thing about him. Development of the productive forces of social labour is the historical task and justification of capital.

Read Keynes if you want to see why capitalism is still viable. All major developed economies are Keyensian. Also the term 'neo-liberalism' doesn't mean anything, capitalism is just operating with a low rate of profitability today.

atimes.com/article/world-markets-crash-except-china/

Why do you guys continue to exist after consistent btfo?

Everyone knows that the EU is social democracy with a pseudo-gold standard framework. American capitalism isn't even 'free-market economics' in the first place.

>You could watch a Yaron Brook video or two on the youtubes
Definitely this
>although imo he's to economics what Shapiro is to politics
Definitely not this

neoliberalism is a buzzword used by teenagers
people.bu.edu/tboas/neoliberalism.pdf
olivermhartwich.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/neoliberalism.pdf
eprints.lse.ac.uk/60471/1/__lse.ac.uk_storage_LIBRARY_Secondary_libfile_shared_repository_Content_Venugopal, R_Neoliberalism as concept_Venugopal_Neoliberalism as concept_2015.pdf

of course, buts its philosophy, not economics

austrian is about as heterodox as marxian economics, if not worse

neutral textbook:
openstax.org/subjects/

Read Weber and Durkheim. They're also persuasive theorists of modernity but their models don't stress conflict nearly as much while still providing explanations for the uniquely modern social problems.

Durkheim, for example, can explain a lot of what's going on by pointing to the fact that the pace of change has been too fast for our social systems to adapt, and also for the over-abundance of individualism being the source of a lot of the alienation, as much if not more than the division of labor and laborer.

>neoliberalism is a buzzword used by teenagers
>"In recent years, neoliberalism has become an academic catchphrase."
Are you claiming that academics are teenagers?

>non-economist talking about hayek/friedman

AAAND into the trashcan

Just read Hegel faggot

while you're here: redpill me on hegel

>reading Marx
>hey guys, what's someone that's not a Marxist that I can read to give me a critique of not-Marxist ideas while calling them Marxist?
>list of the trashcan ideologue economists

Self-crit or git. One theory cannot refute another as such, and if you think it does you're one sad dogmatist. At least Marx spent an immense time not simply saying people were wrong, but showing they were wrong on their own ideas according to their own logic. Everyone suggested so far is inferior in methodology to Marx regardless of how many points they had right for the wrong reasons.

If you want an actual critique of Marx read Winfield's "Rethinking Capital" as one of the immanent critiques which is pro-capitalist. You can also read David P. Levine, an economic theorist who also has some tomes about classical and neoclassical economics as failures from within.

> Everyone suggested so far is inferior in methodology
In your uninformed opinion.

This

marxism was the result of reading hegel so idk about that
hegels dialectic was the inspiration for gommunisms worst atrocities

Have you ever been to a college? Like half the people there are under 19

If this is how autistic anarchists are I'm glad I avoided it.

The best you're going to get is trash propaganda recs like Rand and Solzhenitsyn. Not everything needs to be "balanced out." There really is no neo-liberal Marx.

All of those nations had improved standards of living except Cambodia.

Smith, Mises, Hayek, Friedman

oh and if you want something that specifically refutes marxism read main currents of marxism by kolakowski

well, he could read Krugman and Yellen's Diary desu
there's no big name ideologue equivalent to marx among neoliberal economists but there certainly aren't a shortage of them, they're just a bit technocratic and entirely lack the romanticism that comes with a revolutionary ideology

actually the guy above me just posted Friedman, that's not a bad choice tho certainly not without his own demonstrable failings

...

He’s right though.

Learn the difference between socialism and communism and start talking again.

I wouldn't call Hayek technical. Road to Serfdom is more readable than anything in the Marxist canon other than the actual manifesto