cyu
20th May 2009, 23:59
Excerpts from http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/15701/
In its Sunday, May 17, edition, the Dallas Morning News ran a full-page color spread extolling Karl Marx for his economic abilities. A careful reading of the article by Canadian political economist Leo Pavitch shows that, probably for the first time ever, there are no caveats nor reservations. In the past, Marx might have been acknowledged, but whatever good might have been said of him was always buried beneath a landslide of condemnations
Last November, the Dallas paper even published a response to someone who had slandered Marx with that old opiate of the people phrase that is always brandished to imply that Marx hated God. The response gave Marxs full quote, including the sigh of the oppressed phrase which showed clearly that Karl Marx targeted oppression, not religion.
Panitch explains that contemporary experts like Willem Buiter, a former member of the Bank of Englands Monetary Policy Committee, has come up with a new idea of turning the financial sector into a public utility. Marx and Frederick Engels called for the same thing in 1848! Marx saw, just as many contemporary Americans are beginning to see, that the struggle for control of the financial system is part of the fundamental fight for democracy.
How do we solve our many problems? Panitch says, Marx would insist that, to find solutions to global problems such as climate change, we need to break with the logic of capitalist markets rather than use state institutions to reinforce them. Likewise, he would call for international economic solidarity rather than competition among states.
In its Sunday, May 17, edition, the Dallas Morning News ran a full-page color spread extolling Karl Marx for his economic abilities. A careful reading of the article by Canadian political economist Leo Pavitch shows that, probably for the first time ever, there are no caveats nor reservations. In the past, Marx might have been acknowledged, but whatever good might have been said of him was always buried beneath a landslide of condemnations
Last November, the Dallas paper even published a response to someone who had slandered Marx with that old opiate of the people phrase that is always brandished to imply that Marx hated God. The response gave Marxs full quote, including the sigh of the oppressed phrase which showed clearly that Karl Marx targeted oppression, not religion.
Panitch explains that contemporary experts like Willem Buiter, a former member of the Bank of Englands Monetary Policy Committee, has come up with a new idea of turning the financial sector into a public utility. Marx and Frederick Engels called for the same thing in 1848! Marx saw, just as many contemporary Americans are beginning to see, that the struggle for control of the financial system is part of the fundamental fight for democracy.
How do we solve our many problems? Panitch says, Marx would insist that, to find solutions to global problems such as climate change, we need to break with the logic of capitalist markets rather than use state institutions to reinforce them. Likewise, he would call for international economic solidarity rather than competition among states.