Thursday 23 September 2010

Lib Dems and Marxism

I was surprised to see that Vince Cable is strenuously trying to deny that he is a Marxist after his speech to his party's conference. I've long believed that Marxism is integral to the Lib Dems' ability to say different things to different audiences in different areas - they've just got their Marxes confused.

It was, after all, Groucho, not Karl, who declared that "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them, I've got some other ones".

5 comments:

Alun said...

Is this part of the disease that now seems to be spreading from America whereby anyone who questions the omnipotence of 'the market' must be a 'Marxist'?

raspberry said...

plaid can be eaxactly the same, they can suck up to wealthy landowners in the country one minute and the poorest on council estates the next

Anonymous said...

but do they say completely contradictory things?

Unknown said...

What is wrong with being a Marxist? At the time of writing it was a pretty good stab at describing the economics of industrial Capitalism.

Marx certainly seems to have got one thing right ' The capitalist system holds within it the seeds of its own destruction!'. The trouble is not with marx - it was all the self appointed High Priests of Marxism that came after him - Lenin, Trotsky, and a whole host of others

Unknown said...

I don't think Trotsky and Lenin perverted Marx at all, it was Stalin.

With regards to Cable, all he was offering was the standard populist line, to say he is pro-business and there should be some cuts, but that the bankers are effectively to blame. Most people probably agree with that but Cable is not offering to do anything about it.