Caroline’s blog

New boost for socialist theories

Given the current crisis, the Marx-Engels-Werke hot cakes again. Not just left looking for new approaches to solving the economic problems

Now it is official, the global economic crisis is also the Federal Republic of Germany does not spare. A negative growth of up to 4 per cent is now for the next year by Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Bundesbank and leading economic research institutes forecast. Many billions of euros, dollars or yen will be pumped into the economies to the crisis or at least mitigate.

And yet there is in all parties have a large uncertainty as to whether the current measures are used. No wonder that the one billion syringes primarily as emergency measures to be sold. The right recipe for dealing with the crisis have yet to be developed.

Renaissance of Marx and Engels

Not only for the left lies the answer to the questions raised by the crisis, in Karl Marx and his capital. And nearly 20 years after the collapse of GDR socialism and his discredited theories had sustained, the so-called blue books, the Marx-Engels-Werke, hot cakes again.

They were in the past, the Marxian theories rather a basis for a fragmentation of the Left movement in schools and representatives of various theoretical interpretations. The one thing about the capitalist economy from Marx to know is, it often fell enough in the background.

Marx, the scholar

Without doubt, Marxism offers no simple solution for our current economic problems, primarily because Marx did not just economist, but one of the last universal scholar was classic. His economic analysis and conclusions are based also on social, historical, scientific and philosophical considerations and research.

Still can be extracted, what Karl Marx to the economic crisis in capitalism says.

Solution: socialization of the means of production

The answer is as simple as is known: In capitalism, there is a solution to economic problems is the destruction of values, whether in the form of war and destruction, whether in the form of dispossession and impoverishment of the masses. The crisis is systemic in capitalism, Marx, and is not economical, but only by avoiding societal changes.

The private ownership of means of production inevitably leads to the compulsion of profit maximization, and hence to over-production of goods and creation of overcapacity in production then Make a Personal Budget.

Crisis Management: the destruction of the means of production

Eventually, the markets are saturated, the goods will find no market anymore. Nevertheless, they can not simply be wasted. Because that would ultimately result in socialization, and thus the task of the capitalist system and even the abolition of private ownership of production resources. On the other hand, the surplus goods only really values if they are bought, if they have a social benefit. They lose these benefits when they no longer need or if they no longer can afford. The products and the production are so devalued, are garbage must be disposed of.

Growth by destroying

The destruction of goods and production facilities alone are therefore urgently needed, because it creates a new defect associated with the development of new products, build new production facilities in more profitable competitors are satisfied and the new growth can secure.

The capitalist economy is therefore in accordance with Marxist analysis inevitably crisis and cyclical. Unregulated, this cyclical process occurring earthquake-like corrections to the structural market distortions with the phenomena of war and impoverishment.

In fact also the bourgeois from the cyclical economy Krisenhaftigkeit of the economy, but they keep it within the system manageable, while Marx the seed for the downfall of this society represents. Accordingly, the terminology of bourgeois economists another. Here are personal budget worksheet to a decline in purchasing desire, a tension in the labor market to overheating and cooling, excessive salaries and the likes managers more. And of course, comes at the end of the crisis into the game, their causes, but mostly subjective factors, such as irresponsible speculators, global events or be assigned to the wrong policy.

As the bourgeois economics just do not like Marx from an objective, systemic Krisenhaftigkeit out, appears to deal with crises and Konjunkturflauten merely as a matter of the right economic policies in the context of the system. Counter-cyclical government spending, promoting the export sector, strengthening of domestic demand, increasing spend on tax breaks, government support for liquidity shortages, and much more should the economic ups and downs of social cushion.

According to Marx, incidentally, these are measures that the crisis can only strengthen, extend it so that at the end instead of many small shocks balancing an enormous structural collapse is imminent.

Capitalism or socialism

The solution, obtained from Marxism to the current crisis can be deduced, are not new. Collectivization of the means of production, ie the form of socialism as a society is still the logic of his analysis.

Quite surprisingly, moreover, in this context the discussion about the state voucher for all citizens as a means to stimulate domestic demand, a form of socialization of profits.

Operational decisions are always risks associated with

Entrepreneurial action is always more or less with certain risks and thus with uncertainty.

Of uncertainty may be related to the entrepreneurial action are spoken, where future decision-relevant data is not clearly determined. The following cases may be in terms of subjectively perceived different probabilities for specific situations can be distinguished:

     * The decision-makers in the company are based on the subjective assumption that different environmental situations occurring once or company developments are mutually exclusive. However, it is not known which of the possible situations actually occur, so that they are merely ideas about the likelihood of occurrence of certain situations can express.
     * If the environment to be taken into account developments in a series of numerous alternately occurring situations, knowing the decision makers do not, in what order and frequency of these situations set. Uncertainty relates to the personal finance budgeting only to cases in which subjective situations likely to occur only once.

Regarding the degree of completeness of presentation of the environmental decision-makers, the following cases:

     * Decision makers believe that the admission of other situations than those over which they have an idea, out of the question. This case is in the analysis ungewissheitstheoretischen their subordinates.
     * Decision makers suspect that it alongside of them as possible, respected and content specific situations, other market locations, which they currently have no idea can form (subjectively incomplete environmental performance). In practice this case is more representative.

Risk and uncertainty

The entrepreneurial activity is more or less always with some risk. Measures to increase enterprise security will therefore be covered by each of the underlying concept of risk determined. Unfortunately, this term quite differently, depending on the conception of the theory of entrepreneurial activity in uncertainty exists. The following definition views are particularly well known:

     * The concepts of the Minimax theorem, and the Savage Niehans theorem understand risk the risk that the company's management with respect to their expectations will be disappointed.
     * The risk is in the income dispersion seen with the alternative forecast is connected to environmental situations. This is not the absolute profit or loss amount in the foreground, but the deviation from the average profit down (Semivarianz).
     * Risk is the threat to understand that the company's objectives are not in the expected range can be achieved. To that extent risk is the risk that instead of the expected environmental situation, a situation in which gains an unacceptable level, or there will be a loss situation.

The last bullet is the basis for the theory of profit retention using free budget worksheets, in which the decision of the concrete between two alternatives depends on various criteria:

     * Due to the expected shortage of funds, the profit criterion on a sustainable maximization of profit from.
     * Act as a quasi reservation alternatives are all subjected to a secondary condition, the security condition as can be. While the theoretical analysis in this security condition is taken so that the respective market situation, a certain minimum profit to reach, is in operational practice, the security condition is usually coarser expressed.

Since on the basis of the theory of profit retention, the techniques for handling uncertainty can be fully taken into account, the rule of this term risk assumed.