"Marx Was Right" Article

[Rusty Shackleford]

I figured i would post this short article to show the very relevant need for a socialist revolution and the actual conditions in society today that were predicted by theoreticians roughly 150 years ago.

http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=14281&news_iv_ctrl=1008

Business Web sites: 'Marx was right'
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
By: Richard Becker
Data show 'middle class' living standards in downward trend
While they didn’t actually come right out and say that, an article posted by a number of business-oriented Web sites in the last week irrefutably confirms some of Karl Marx’s key assertions regarding the capitalist system.
Over the past century and a half, countless capitalist politicians and academics have built careers trying to prove that Marx and his writings were outdated, misleading and just plain wrong. Nowhere has the effort to discredit Marxism been more energetic than here in the United States.
Incurring particular wrath in bourgeois circles over the years was Marx’s contention in his groundbreaking 1867 work Volume I of “Capital”: “Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time the accumulation of misery . . . at the opposite pole.” In other words, as the rich get richer—and because they are getting richer—the poor get poorer.
The enemies of Marx and socialism argued vehemently that this had been disproven by an overall rise in wages and living conditions for much of the working class inside the imperialist countries in the late 19th and much of the 20th century. What the apologists of capitalism always left out of their “analysis” was the super-exploitation and extreme impoverishment of the workers and peasants of Asia, Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East—the vast majority of the world’s people—which, in addition to an industrial monopoly, made possible a temporary rise in living standards inside the colonizing states.
Over the past three decades, however, working-class living standards in the United States have resumed the downward trend inherent under capitalism, and in the last few years at a quickly accelerating pace.
An article by Michael Snyder, “The Middle Class in America is Radically Shrinking, Here Are the Stats to Prove It,” has been picked up by numerous Web sites including Tech Ticker and Business Insider. (While he uses the term “middle class,” Snyder is really referring to the working class—but even talking about workers as a class is discouraged in establishment circles. Sounds too much like Marxism.)
The points made by Snyder include:


83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1 percent of all Americans.
24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30-to-1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300- and 500-to-1.
The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number to go up to 43 million in 2011.
Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010—the highest rate in 20 years.
Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.

While presenting an array of very useful facts, Snyder does not draw the only logical conclusion from his own report: The capitalist system must go.

[Luisrah]

Very useful! Thanks :)

[mike75]

Because a marxist has a hammer he/she insist on treating everything as nails. Honestly, Marx is of little relevance here. Instead of Marx try reading a working class economist such as Jack Rasmus. The unequality in the US does not stem from the development of productive forces but relates to legislation and the financial side of the US economy. In particular US government legislation has been adopted to suit the interests of the wealthy few. The decline in real wages and weak position of labor in USA has everything to do with the weak organizing of the unions and regulations imposed by government on unions. Of course to a marxist everything is "capitalism" from an birds eye view.

In the social democratic country I live real wages have in fact increased thanks to unions. So was Marx wrong?. The primary force behind the rising inequality here stems from "the law of rent" and not from the capitalist/worker relation.

[Qayin]

Of course to a marxist everything is "capitalism" from an birds eye view.
Probably because it is.


The primary force behind the rising inequality here stems from "the law of rent" and not from the capitalist/worker relation.
Oh ok.

[KurtFF8]

Because a marxist has a hammer he/she insist on treating everything as nails. Honestly, Marx is of little relevance here. Instead of Marx try reading a working class economist such as Jack Rasmus. The unequality in the US does not stem from the development of productive forces but relates to legislation and the financial side of the US economy. In particular US government legislation has been adopted to suit the interests of the wealthy few. The decline in real wages and weak position of labor in USA has everything to do with the weak organizing of the unions and regulations imposed by government on unions. Of course to a marxist everything is "capitalism" from an birds eye view.

In the social democratic country I live real wages have in fact increased thanks to unions. So was Marx wrong?. The primary force behind the rising inequality here stems from "the law of rent" and not from the capitalist/worker relation.

I don't see how anything here actually contradicts Marx. To say that something is part of the "financial side" of the economy and not the productive relations side completely ignores the fact that the financial sector has had a very important relationship to the productive economy (particularly the changing ratio between finance and the "real economy" and the owners of the industrial sector more and more getting into finance with their reinvestment)

And as for unions helping wage increases, what does this have to do with the OP? The union movement in America has been stopped in its tracks for about the same period of time where wages have stagnated.

[el_chavista]

In the social democratic country I live real wages have in fact increased thanks to unions. So was Marx wrong?.
When, where (you know, "the journalist's questions").

The primary force behind the rising inequality here stems from "the law of rent" and not from the capitalist/worker relation.Are you serious? Can this Ricardian law explain how amid an economic crises the profit of capitalists increases while the income of enterprises decreases?
I think the topic is very useful because the middle "class" was predicted to shrink by Marx but the very existence of the USSR kept American labor income fair.

[Barry Lyndon]

Another thing that pisses me off when apologists for capitalism talk about the rise of living standards in the early 20th century in the United States and Western Europe is that they just leave out that this was also a period of violent labor struggle in which thousands of workers were killed, injured, beaten and arrested fighting for the right to unionize, to have a minimun wage, to have an 8 hour work day, workers health insurance, an end to child labor, and so on. The rise in living standards is no thanks to the capitalist class, but to organized labor.
By contrast, the retreat of Labor before Big Capital in the US, particularly in the last 30 years(in large part due to globalization), has caused the erosion of the American middle class.