Row in Hungary over Victor Orbans regime closing of Soros funded university. Orban is no angel, has authoritarian tendencies and exploits race tensions. Along with this Hungary has a poor record over the protection of their Jewish minority. But as has been highlighted on here Soros funded foundations have been involved in attempted regime change of democratically elected governments across Eastern Europe, most recently Romania.
Pro EU protests by student being held this weekend in Budapest at the closing of the university.
It's a quite grim spectacle at the moment of a choice between neoliberal globalists or right wing conservatives bordering on fascists. Trump Clinton, Le Pen Macron, Yanukovch Poroshenko. It seems that the choice for people is the right or the far right.
This could end up with the break up of the Eu in the east, with the Visegrad group. The Eu defeat of syriza could end up being their downfall. A grassroots left wing movement that was happy to remain in the Eu but wanted radical economic reform. Did the aggressive facing down of syriza leave potential similar partners across Europe feeling redundant? And with this political elimination of the left...a left that was happy to remain in the eu....leave a vacuum which now the far right is beginning to fill, and not afraid to break up the EU.
Yes, agreed. Soros is a shifty entity whose main agenda has been to work on the break up and cultural/economic shift of the states within or supported by the USSR. This has now extended to countries in which the USSR ever had an influence - Syria included - and the US itself. A modus operandi was developed of declassed educated young people being trained up and unleashed (with slogans of "democracy" "freedom" etc.)with the aim of extending a neoliberal economcy with NATO / the US to back it up. We are still seeing the working out of the impact of the fall of the USSR along with globalisation and the shift of manufacturing to the East - the SBP yesterday carried a long article on a French former-coal-mining town, which notoriously has politically shifted from solidly communist party towards Le Pen and the far right since the end of the USSR. This doesn't mean that every worker who loses their job moves to the right, but over decades, some do, and others stop voting, and others emigrate, and the left vote collapses.
Historians may look back at this era of European history and point to the working out of the coal measures and gas of Europe as being a pivotal moment. Russia, just to the east and still full of mineral resources, coal and gas, must be aware that it defends itself to the hilt or will be rolled over and sucked up. Europe without an independent energy source, and with a flattening population, is living on borrowed time. France, and the UK, are all over the Middle East like a rash. The move towards EU armed forces is inexorable.
Soros groups have been active in Russia too,.
It is a good while now since the US bombed the heck out of Yugoslavia, balkanised the region and established its massive base in Kosovo.
The US has its feet in between Western Europe and Russia and is pushing NATO Eastwards steadily - ructions going on at the moment over further NATO accessions in that region.
Last edited by C. Flower; 01-05-2017 at 01:16 PM.
I recall arguing with one of the "Marcusites" about economics, quoting from the third volume of Capital which I'd just read, and the guy sneering at me because I hadn't read volume 4 unlike him.
Karl Marx's "Theories of Surplus Value," usually referred to as Vol 4. of Capital, runs to 1173 pages, a bit more than "some jottings." I have Parts I, II and III, in hardback, sitting on my bookshelf. I regret to say that I didn't get very far, primarily because it is essentially a criticism of all previous economists, and it makes little sense to read them without reading those he criticized first. I have read Smith's "Wealth of Nations," and did read Marx's rather acerbic criticism of it a couple decades ago. One thing I remember from it is Marx's rather contemptuous dismissal of him as a vulgarizer of many superior predecessors, like William Petty and Ben Franklin. To make much sense out of it would have required reading not just Smith, but said predecessors and Marx's critique of them.
A thorough critique of the history of economic theory is exactly necessary for a true understanding of economics, but there is only so much one person can do in one lifetime, even if one has advanced degrees and reads extremely fast, as I do.
At the very first history class I took at the graduate level, the professor made a joke, which he said he could make as a historian, but that none of us were allowed to repeat, as we were not historians. Well, now I am so here it is.
The only talent you need to be a historian is the ability to read fast.
Not at all what I got out of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, which I recommend to everyone as a very good prep book before reading Capital.
Marx also had plenty of time for it.
Last edited by C. Flower; 04-05-2017 at 05:30 PM.
You know, I had the same impression you did. I liked the book, indeed much of what he had to say seemed quite reminiscent of Capital.
Marx, however, was a much harsher critic than you or I. Basically, what he said was that everything worthwhile in the book had been expressed earlier and better by other economists such as William Petty, of whom he had a very high opinion. And that Smith had vulgarised what they had to say.
It's all in that huge link from MIA you posted, some 100 pages in, chapters III and IV.
And, is this in fact a fourth volume of Capital? Engels thought so, though he died before he could get to work on it, as he did with Vols. II and III, also left unfinished by Marx. Here's what the Moscow publisher had to say on this.
about the manuscript Theories of Surplus-Value and the form in which Engels intended to publish it.
eliminating the theoretical passages contained in the manuscript of the Theories.
volume of Capital for the printer; he died barely four months after this letter was written.
Last edited by A Marxist Historian; 04-05-2017 at 07:29 PM.
CookieMonster? Lol. What happened to that guy anyway?