punisa
22nd February 2009, 10:28
I stumbled upon an interesting article and decided to share. What do you think?
Despite the obvious dislike for socialism, I've seen more and more articles published that give credit to Marx and his theory. Majority of those also acknowledge that "we" have been fooled for 100 years by propaganda and that the majority of people doesn't have a clue what Marx is about.
from: http://www.northstarwriters.com/dbl041.htm
The Last Laugh of Karl Marx
Poor Karl Marx. Never got any respect. Not in the USA, anyway. Seldom in the course of human events has one man been so derided, so reviled by such a great herd of ignoramuses, virtually none of whom have even the faintest notion what the object of their derision actually said, thought or stood for.
Pity. Not for Karl who, dead the last century and a half, surely doesn’t care. Pity for us. Had we not succumbed to nearly a century’s worth of relentless propagandizing against him, had we allowed our minds to remain open enough to at least consider his analyses of capitalism’s vulnerabilities and blind spots, we might have saved ourselves a lot of pain.
One can entirely dismiss the concept of socialism and all of Marx’s intricate theories and ruminations about unattainable worker’s paradises, but only the most intellectually dishonest could deny – in light of current events – that his insights concerning capitalism’s structural defects were spot-on.
In a nutshell, Marx speculated that in order to function over the intermediate term as a sustainable social system, capitalism inevitably depended upon the continued concentration of economic and political power into an ever more exclusive, ever shrinking strata of society, a rarified microgrouping of banking and financial elites. This parasite class, entirely dependent upon making money off of money rather than off of productivity, would continually need to accelerate their rate of accumulation in order to maintain control over the marketplace and ensure their security. This was fine – so long as there was sufficient actual production by actual workers (and, correspondingly, consumption by actual consumers) to allow society to function and the corporo-state to stumble forward even as it was being bled through usury.
As the siphoning of wealth from producer to parasite accelerated, however, new and ingenious means would be required in order to ensure the continued increase in the upwards flow of capital even as production and consumption began to level off (enter “mortgage-backed securities” and 30 percent credit card interest rates). Finally and inevitably, the burden of the financial class’s gluttony would prove too great, and the economic gears would grind to a halt.
Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?
71,000 jobs lost in one day this week couldn’t possibly have anything to do with all that.
Neither could the now-routine monthly reportings of double-digit declines in home values. Right?
Neither could the case of – ahem – former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Bernard Madoff, or $4 billion in bonuses paid out to executives of Merill Lynch, a bank in receivership (funny how “financial services firms” suddenly became “banks” once government bailout funds were to be had). Neither could the doubling of the national debt (from $5 to $10 trillion dollars) over the last eight years, or its tenfold increase since the inauguration of “fiscal conservative” Ronald Reagan in 1981.
America’s recent election process served as proof that democracy, at least as practiced in the United States, remains as healthy as ever, for whatever that’s worth. American corporatism, usually presumed to be democracy’s Siamese twin for whatever reason, is in a much poorer state, overcome by a potentially fatal parasitic infection that it failed to recognize and failed to treat, simply because it couldn’t bring itself to trust the messenger.
Marx wrote that in the end, capitalism’s fate would be sealed not by the acts of its enemies, but by its internal rot. As Madoff, Lehmann, Greenspan and their fellow human tapeworms have shown, the Harvard MBA infestation is complete, total, and possibly incurable. If Marx were around, he’d be laughing his head off, but there are going to be plenty of tears to go around for everyone else.
Despite the obvious dislike for socialism, I've seen more and more articles published that give credit to Marx and his theory. Majority of those also acknowledge that "we" have been fooled for 100 years by propaganda and that the majority of people doesn't have a clue what Marx is about.
from: http://www.northstarwriters.com/dbl041.htm
The Last Laugh of Karl Marx
Poor Karl Marx. Never got any respect. Not in the USA, anyway. Seldom in the course of human events has one man been so derided, so reviled by such a great herd of ignoramuses, virtually none of whom have even the faintest notion what the object of their derision actually said, thought or stood for.
Pity. Not for Karl who, dead the last century and a half, surely doesn’t care. Pity for us. Had we not succumbed to nearly a century’s worth of relentless propagandizing against him, had we allowed our minds to remain open enough to at least consider his analyses of capitalism’s vulnerabilities and blind spots, we might have saved ourselves a lot of pain.
One can entirely dismiss the concept of socialism and all of Marx’s intricate theories and ruminations about unattainable worker’s paradises, but only the most intellectually dishonest could deny – in light of current events – that his insights concerning capitalism’s structural defects were spot-on.
In a nutshell, Marx speculated that in order to function over the intermediate term as a sustainable social system, capitalism inevitably depended upon the continued concentration of economic and political power into an ever more exclusive, ever shrinking strata of society, a rarified microgrouping of banking and financial elites. This parasite class, entirely dependent upon making money off of money rather than off of productivity, would continually need to accelerate their rate of accumulation in order to maintain control over the marketplace and ensure their security. This was fine – so long as there was sufficient actual production by actual workers (and, correspondingly, consumption by actual consumers) to allow society to function and the corporo-state to stumble forward even as it was being bled through usury.
As the siphoning of wealth from producer to parasite accelerated, however, new and ingenious means would be required in order to ensure the continued increase in the upwards flow of capital even as production and consumption began to level off (enter “mortgage-backed securities” and 30 percent credit card interest rates). Finally and inevitably, the burden of the financial class’s gluttony would prove too great, and the economic gears would grind to a halt.
Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?
71,000 jobs lost in one day this week couldn’t possibly have anything to do with all that.
Neither could the now-routine monthly reportings of double-digit declines in home values. Right?
Neither could the case of – ahem – former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Bernard Madoff, or $4 billion in bonuses paid out to executives of Merill Lynch, a bank in receivership (funny how “financial services firms” suddenly became “banks” once government bailout funds were to be had). Neither could the doubling of the national debt (from $5 to $10 trillion dollars) over the last eight years, or its tenfold increase since the inauguration of “fiscal conservative” Ronald Reagan in 1981.
America’s recent election process served as proof that democracy, at least as practiced in the United States, remains as healthy as ever, for whatever that’s worth. American corporatism, usually presumed to be democracy’s Siamese twin for whatever reason, is in a much poorer state, overcome by a potentially fatal parasitic infection that it failed to recognize and failed to treat, simply because it couldn’t bring itself to trust the messenger.
Marx wrote that in the end, capitalism’s fate would be sealed not by the acts of its enemies, but by its internal rot. As Madoff, Lehmann, Greenspan and their fellow human tapeworms have shown, the Harvard MBA infestation is complete, total, and possibly incurable. If Marx were around, he’d be laughing his head off, but there are going to be plenty of tears to go around for everyone else.