Muddy waters: why Vinnies are wrong on inequality

He also argues that what he calls the “liberal democratic model of governance” is implicated in, and helps disguise, the “systematic dispossess[ion] materially, socially and politically” of the poor.

State planning in place of the capitalist market system

Marx believed that the working class will never receive the true value of its labour until the wealth of the capitalist class is appropriated. This in turn will require the abolition of private property and the replacement of the capitalist market system with a system of socialised ownership and state planning.

Vinnies broadly agree. Falzon again:

The market exists as a structure for the generation of profit. It rewards those who have capital. It does not exist to serve the needs of those it exploits…The market is part of the problem, not the solution.

In place of the market, he advocates state planning:

Real political security for the people of Australia means a concrete commitment to strategic economic development that does not rely on the market but engages all levels of government in a plan.

Structures of domination

Marx emphasized that he was writing, not about individual capitalists and workers, but about the “structural relation” between them. Workers and capitalists are not the agents of their own fate but are the “bearers” of objective structural realities. Individuals can do little to improve their fates - what is needed is structural transformation (i.e. revolution).

Vinnies agree that individuals lack agency. Falzon’s paper attacks the "specious form of blaming the structurally exploited and excluded for their poverty, inferring that they, rather than the movements and machinations of capital, can make both the ultimate and intimate difference to their own living conditions. This position would be laughable were it not so insulting."

In plain English - there is nothing the poor can do to improve their situation unless the capitalist system itself is overturned.

The Vinnies’ researchers deny their work is Marxist-inspired. John Wicks even tells us that Marxism and Christianity are fundamentally opposed doctrines. But if they want to distance themselves from Marxism they should stop using Marxist theories, concepts and arguments. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck.