Reading JD, I thought I'd go back and check the archives, because I could have sworn somebody was actually giving financial advice in response to the original query. The thread started on 21 June.
Jim's was the first response-- his words were "diversify, diversify, diversify.." he did warn against expecting the stock market to be moral. In fact he warned against "overweighting" stocks, but I think that was for performance reasons. The thread wanders a bit, as others, offer their personal wishes about retirement plans, a debate on presidents and military actions, ensues, and then Jim repeats his advice about diversifying, holding for the long term, so "you won't eat dog food." Henwood's got his cats and his cat food, Jim's got dog food. Bird seed anybody? Then comes the advice about doing the right thing in the international debt markets and taking positions (long? short?) in Venezuelan debt. That's a real thing of beauty by the way. Now for Marx's writings. Marx's work, throughout all the notebooks, the volumes of Capital, the Grundrisse, is thoroughly focused on the core of capital-- the social relation of production-- the relation between labor and the conditions of labor, upon social labor and private property, upon wage-labor and capital, how each exists only in the organization of the other in a specific historical moment, and how the conflict in that organization manifest itself in every facet of capital's circuits. Is there more to Marx than the class struggle? Yes. But there is nothing to Marx without that class struggle. All that is more is the expansion of the that core. The competitition of capital's is a manifestation of the "flaw" in the private property form that encapsulates social production, as capitals have to achieve a social "verification" by throwing all privately appropriated values into circulation to obtain any portion of the total value. It is a manifestation of the conflict between use and exchange, or.. private property and social production., or labor and the conditions of labor. It is in fact, derivative. You can look at the whole in pieces, but only if the pieces are recognized as a facet, a momentary condition of the essential organizing social relation. Finally, I come to the remark about giving advice simply as "common sense." Marx, like Hegel, had a lot to say about common sense. None of it good. And why? Because common sense was an ideological concept, not a critical analysis. Which is why Marxist financial advice is worse than an oxymoron. And I say all of the above in good humor with peace and love in my heart for all.
