Karl Marx is an Imperialist

Yesterday, as my socialist revolutionary friend and port and policy adversary Archie first pointed out to me, Karl Marx was trending on Twitter. I've no idea why the left wing celebrate Marx because it's economics is entirely based on imperialism, which I'm sure they'd love to have explained to them.

Socialist Oppressor.

In the mind of Marx trade was a win/lose situation. This is the whole basis for the idea of oppression of the proletariat; the workers lose by having to forcibly trade their labour to the factory owner who winds a big profit. This win/lose idea is based on the medieval idea of zero sum economics. According to this economic theory there is only so much wealth in the world and the objective of any person or state is to achieve as much of it as possible. But how can you measure wealth?

It was believed that money was wealth and money of course, until we very recently started to base it on a hope and a prayer, was based on bullion (silver or gold). A persons objective under the Marxist/zero sum economics idea is thus to obtain as much wealth as possible by oppressing anyone you meet who has any.

This is exactly what monarchs across Europe did to finance their wars and keep them in power. In the late medieval era countries started to send people off across the world to look and set up colonies to gain wealth. Spain was best at doing this and got hold of half of the Americas and its very rich gold and silver reserves. England was not so good; in the early 17th century we hadn't found any bullion. This was of course a great national disappointment.

Because of this disaster England had to keep as much of the gold and silver in the country as possible. If the government could not do so it thought it would become less wealthy and would lose power consequently. The problem was those pesky merchants who were trading money for other countries' goods. This needed to be stopped and so massive tariffs were imposed on all imports to dissuade merchants from trading gold for foreign goods. This starved other nations of the worlds wealth and encouraged merchants to export and gain money from the other countries' wealth.

In economic terms England had created a mercantalist or 'perfect' imperial system under zero sum economics. It had become wealthy by oppressing the merchants, other nations and the people either directly or as a consequence of its system of tariffs.

The only problem is this didn't work because Marxist/ zero sum economic assumptions are entirely wrong. Under these ideas wealth is money or bullion. Yet this clearly isn't true because pieces of gold and paper are worth nothing but the materials that can be made out of them or bought with them. It's the goods that produce wealth. A miser lives in absolute poverty but still has lots of money.

There is also no limit on how much wealth there is in the world, another Marxist/zero sum economic mistake. As you probably have realised in the world by now, there is no shortage in goods and services that can be bought in the world. If you take gold and silver for instance more of it is being found today than ever. There is quite literally no limit to these resources. We can always create wealth.

It should be quite obvious then that to gain wealth and to better the lives of the oppressed factory workers, known less technically as the poor, we should open up trade so that we can produce more wealth and more things so people can have better lives.

This then begs the question what the hell is the economics of imperialism and Marxism about, it clearly doesn't gain wealth or improve people's lives. It's one thing only and that is control. Marxism follows the same ideas of empire and that is to ruthlessly oppress the people so leaders can have control over subjects, and that's still true even if we only count the true socialist systems like the Paris Commune. Marxism, state capitalism, socialism, imperialism, mercantilism, protectionism, statism are all about the same thing and that's oppressing the people.

It is Christmas.

I take this as no surprise. I have been telling people about the socialist oppressors for a while now. Just look at Marx and Engels. Both of them were snobby middle class elites who wanted power. Engels was a rich factory owner who wanted to increase his own influence for God's sake. Owen Jones constantly talks about state control over people's lives and how we should return to the socialist economy I outlined above. If people genuinely want to help others left wing economics should be treated in the same way as imperialism. It should be reviled and hated. For increased wealth workers of the world unite around free trade. 

The real revolutionaries looking after the poorest are free marketeers like Mrs Thatcher.