We may have been just one day out from the budget, but feedback from yesterday’s edition of Crikey was firmly focused on other areas: Glenn Dyer and Bernard Keane’s condemnation of the new AMP chair’s comments on corporate culture, and Matthew Lesh’s piece on Karl Marx. If you missed either, check them out below and add your own thoughts. We read and meaningfully consider all feedback.

 

Re: Glenn Dyer and Bernard Keane’s “New AMP chair’s views on regulation living proof of Godwin’s Law”

John Richardson writes: David Murray’s claim that it’s not possible to “regulate” culture is simply nonsense. A commonly accepted definition of culture is simply “the way we do things around here”.

Any company that has the slightest interest in building a world class organisation must create a culture that fundamentally respects the interests of all of its stakeholders, not just shareholders, as the AMP and our banks so demonstrably have come to believe.

As far as legislation is concerned, it is a sad indictment of the world’s corporate culture that the community finds it necessary to prescribe standards of behaviour as basic as “right and wrong”.

But this is surely the ultimate legacy of the US business school playbook, which is all about screwing everything and everybody to serve your own ends, and if you are unfortunate enough to get caught, play the victim and blame everyone-else. It is this fundamental truth that makes it so critical that there are real consequences for those responsible for the crimes of AMP at whatever level they were committed. Without such real consequences, nothing will change, apart from appearances.

Sadly, by his comments, Murray has guaranteed his failure at AMP before he starts, as the single most critical requirement to enable positive change to occur is the presence of the genuine and committed leadership necessary to show the way.

Godwin’s Law? How about the Peter Principle?

Robert Garnett writes: So you can’t legislate against culture? Maybe not, but you certainly can legislate to prevent egregious behavior. If we legislated against the behavior of the oligarchs who run these businesses and locked them up — instead of simply fining their corporations — we might in fact find that useful cultural shifts might occur without doing anything else.

The idea that a corporation has the same rights as an individual is a legal fiction created by their lawyers and ultimately their vassals in government. The Corporations Act which puts the interests of shareholders’ above societies’ best interest would be a very good place to start.

As with the Americans and British, Australians are in awe of the rights of property, or more accurately the rights of those who own property and the more property you have the more rights you have and bugger everybody else. People like Murray seem well described by Adam Smith who observed, “All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.”

 

Re: Matthew Lesh’s “Wishing you a miserable 200th birthday, Marx, you racist blaggard”

John Kotsopoulos writes: “In capitalism, you can pursue you own desires, live as you choose, earn money as you please, and spend it on what you want. In socialism, you are inevitably oppressed, if not staved (sic).” This is a very simplistic outline of socialism and capitalism.

Marx never actually lived to see his theories in practice and to blame him for all that has happened in his name, and in pursuit of his theories, is ridiculous. Would Matthew Lesh seek to blame Christianity for the two World Wars where different branches of the faith endorsed the senseless brutality of the various warring parties?

Arguably Marxism in all its forms was just a state version of feudalism. Both had a role in the development of society at the relevant time. As an indicator of this, I understand that there are currently 476 billionaires in China and 98 in Russia.  

There is a middle path between socialist idealism and the unrestrained form of capitalism that has brought us the current stomach-churning financial industry scandals and every financial disaster since the Dutch tulip crisis. I wish the IPA would drop its partisan approach to public policy and realise, like the banks are finally acknowledging, that putting the interests of customers first is good for business and the community.

Niall Clugston writes: Ironically, Matthew Lesh of the Institute of Public Affairs, and dedicated champion of capitalism, doesn’t know what a contract of employment is.

In his critique of Karl Marx, he notes that “Marx had an affair with his life-long family maid Helen Demuth, who was, ironically, never paid for her backbreaking labour”. Demuth was in fact not Karl’s employee at all, which is probably why he never paid her!

Karl’s wife Jenny was the daughter of Baron von Westphalen, a Prussian aristocrat. He decided that if his daughter did insist on marrying a Jewish radical, she should at least have a maid. She was a loyal feudal retainer of the von Westphalen family, she did as she was told, and remained with Jenny and Karl for all of her life. She had no contract with Karl Marx.

In fact, under the law of England, it is impossible to have a contract if there is no payment or quid pro quo (“consideration”). If Jenny had left Karl, Helen Demuth would be bound to go with her. It was a feudal, not a capitalist relationship which Karl was not party to. By the way, Lesh seems to have got his information from Paul Johnson’s book, The Intellectuals. In the book, Johnson gleefully points out that various left-wing intellectuals had committed adultery. Since then it emerged that Johnson himself had had an affair.

Hunt Ian writes: Surely Crikey could have got a critical article that was less ignorant and did not resort to ad hominem and exaggerated claims about the effects of Marx’s ideas.

It is clear to anyone with a knowledge of history that Marx was a caring but nineteenth century man, with limitations typical of the time. It is also clear that Marx’s ideas were an influence on others. We are then given an appallingly ignorant list of cases where people used Marx’s ideas in various ways. It simply lumps together all the casualties of wars involving people who used Marx’s ideas and implicitly absolves other actors (such as Hitler) and blames Marx’s ideas for all the casualties, including the more than 20 million lives for which Hitler and his agents were responsible.

 

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