Jan 23, 2009

Karl Marx - 1867

Owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until debt becomes unbearable.

The unpaid debt will lead to the bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be nationalized, and the State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to Communism.

ht (Maria at UBS)


3 comments:

cosimo said...

Lovely one. However, I "suspect" that Marx implied that Communism would be a happy ending...

Publius said...

Regarding the comment by cosimo —

IMO, Marx has been misused for over a hundred years. I am firm in my stand against collectivism and most of the other 'isms, but when I decided to try and become educated by reading things (including what had been billed as commie propaganda so stay away), I read Marx's Commie manifesto and then Das Capital (about 5 years ago) and was astounded at how what he was saying was being played out in America and how it has to play out that way. That it has to go that way is exactly what he was saying

I really do not think he was trying to imply that Communism would have a happy ending - although I guess that an implication is really something that happens in the mind of the reader so I guess that I cannot dispute that you suspect the was trying to imply something. I prefer instead, to go with what he was saying. (My take on ) His thesis was that due to the progression of industrial society and the fact that capital is always trying to put itself to use, that capitalism would (must) sow the seeds of its own demise. Essentially, that the capitalist system would cause a concentration of previously distributed, and unconnected, and uncommunicating workers into the industrial centers, and that from that agglomeration, would put these workers into communication with each other. This would lead to the ability to take coordinated action to form a ball team - to sell girl scout cookies - or to try and change work conditions (especially if management gave them something to grumble about), or, to try and wrest political control from the owners of the factories - i.e., wrest control from the owner's of the capital that made the factories possible.

This exactly played out in the industrial segment as the northern factories (and European factories) brought a critical mass of workers together, said mass of workers then organizing into unions and then striking (competing) against the owners. This is exactly what is playing out today as we have the auto industry that has been taken over by these communicating collectives and that is exactly why capital, so as to protect itself, has fled to other areas.

In addition, this is exactly what is happening as the collective had infected the government machinery to "take things back in the name of the people" and started the collectivist assimilation of industry by government. This type of system is called by another 'ism ...Fascism.

Njabs said...

I hope we all learn the lesson and understand that we're part of the system but we 've got a choice to break out and act sensibly.