In defense of socialism, again

In my experience, the most confident and strident defenders of capitalism are the ones who know the least about socialism. I can't fully blame them for this because there is so much intentional misinformation, as well as suppressed information, that it takes a herculean effort to get a more accurate viewpoint.
This essay is a follow-up to this previous one.

To take a random, but representational, example of misinformation, consider this recent article on Venezuela.

Crappy socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro was elected to another six-year term in Venezuela, and the equally corrupt and authoritarian Turkish president campaigned for him so they could share in the farcical fun.

"Leaders" like Maduro, Erdogan and Putin hate freedom because it gives filthy peasants too much say and power over their own lives. They liquidate government holdings to enrich themselves and their select cronies, and they steal from poor people who live horrible, short, Hobbesian lives before they die in squalor. It's no surprise these liberty loathers create an axis of a-holes; they need to sow discord in the world's most powerful economy because a truly free market disrupts their tyrannical buggery.

Let's ignore for a moment how the Venezuela government cut the poverty rate in half, and how that doesn't jibe with stealing from poor people. Instead let's consider the "dictator" and his "tyrannical buggery".
A 2 minute web search will take you to this. The capitalist opposition party has ruled the Venezuela legislature for the last two years. That doesn't jibe with "socialism" or "dictatorship".

These easily proven lies are typical of the right-wing slanders of socialism.
The lies are transparently false, and yet people believe them. More importantly, regular working want to believe them.
Why would poor people want to believe the worst about socialism? The reason isn't because of socialism. The reason is socialists.

If one accepts Orwell’s premise that for the common man socialism means improved living and working conditions, why is socialism unpopular? The fault lies with socialists. For one thing, socialism attracts a fair number of cranks. “One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.” Some of those categories should be dropped and new ones should be added, such as gender studies students. However, the sentiment is correct. An ideology that appeals to a large number of oddballs has little hope of being adopted by the average man.

Socialists also know little about those they wish to help. Their language is a dead giveaway of their ignorance. In the Twentieth Century, socialists laced their diatribes about industrial capitalism with jargon, such as “dialectical materialism” and “class consciousness”. Their spiritual heirs decry “systems of oppression” and exhort people to be “woke”. No average man speaks or thinks in those terms. Yet, he is the one who must be “educated".

Although the phrase virtue signaling did not exist in the 1930s, the concept did.

George Orwell is 100% right.
If you can't talk to someone in a language they can relate to, the problem isn't the other person.
I personally find that using the term "woke" is one of the most arrogant acts someone can do. It requires assuming that you know "the truth", which doesn't play well outside of a church.

This is a big clue as to why regular people would believe transparent lies about socialism - because either they feel that socialists are looking down on them, or that they aren't familiar with the real world. That's why you see so many article like this, in which they in turn consider a socialist to be stupid, lazy, and greedy.
The writer probably couldn't even correctly define socialism, and is obviously ignorant of the various flavors of socialism, but he doesn't care and neither does his target audience.
Another example of conservatives lumping "scary words" together regardless of facts and logic is this article, Nazism, Fascism, and Socialism Are All Rooted in Communism.

Now the news media may be dedicated to the agenda of their corporate masters, but they will still make a token attempt at providing balance. I've noticed that those articles of balance are usually posted on Friday afternoons and Saturday evenings, when they are least likely to be read.
For instance, consider this Yahoo news article - Here's why you can't blame socialism for Venezuela's crisis.
The article points out a) falling oil prices, b) massive increase of unsustainable debt, c) Maduro appointed a former general with no experience in the oil sector.
In other words, problems that you will find in many corrupt, third-world, capitalist nations.

Al-Jazeera goes into this even deeper. It points out an overvalued currency and controls on access to foreign currency led to capital flight.

When the former finance minister Jorge Giordani resigned in protest of Maduro's mishandling of the economy, he estimated that between 2003 and 2012 a truly incredible $300bn was lost to currency arbitrage alone.

That perfectly explains Venezuela's inflation problems. But the real kicker to the article is a little lower.

First, it is important to realise that Chavez chose to call his transformative project "21st-century socialism", but Venezuela's economy remained market-based and private-sector dominated throughout his time in office.

Though the social economy and the public sector were heavily promoted - including through nationalisation - the private sector was expected to remain dominant, and it did. A centrally planned socialist economy like Cuba's was neither the aim nor the reality.

To say that Venezuela isn't an actual socialist country, much less a socialist dictatorship, is to invite being laughed at. Reality and facts will not be considered under any circumstances.
So many lies upon lies of indoctrination have been built into our political culture that the only way you can reach someone is by sticking to the basics. Using terms like “dialectical materialism” and “systems of oppression” is wasting your time and breath.

Interestingly, it was an article on The American Conservative of all places, that stated a connection between today's capitalist leaders and leftist rhetoric.

There is a long established practice of confusing what is misleadingly called “Cultural Marxism” with socialism and Marxist economics. The two are most definitely not the same...
In today’s Western countries, however, most of the social program of the Frankfurt School seems to have been carried out, accomplished without the state controlling production. Even more strikingly, the managers of global capitalist enterprises have happily promoted the cultural left’s agenda, from homosexual marriage to mandatory transgender restrooms. And unlike the French Communist Party after the Second World War and American labor organizers of an earlier era, both of which opposed immigration because of its impact on the native workforce, our culturally radical capitalists are delighted to bring in cheap foreign labor, legal or otherwise.

Anyone who advocates socialism should be able to respond to those capitalist lies in two sentences or less.
For instance, when the capitalist tries to equate capitalism with freedom, you can ask him, "At what point in your workday, when your boss is telling you what to do, when to do it, and where to do it, do you feel free?"
And when someone says that we should run the government like a business, you ask "How does the top-down, authoritarian structure of a corporation look representative to you?"
And when some Libertarian says, "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner," ask the simple question, "When in the history of democracy has that ever happened?"

It also helps knowing your stuff.
I once had a discussion with a right-wing coworker who was praising the wonders and perfections of capitalism. When the topic of monopolies and price-fixing came up, and how capitalism would never allow that, I tossed in, "You know what Adam Smith said: 'Seldom do people of the same trade meet without a conspiracy to rig prices'."
[I got it a bit wrong. The actual quote is worse: 'People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.']
His response was of disbelief, "Adam Smith? The Invisible Hand? You read Adam Smith?"
I was then able to get in a few words about capitalism's short-comings according to Adam Smith and my coworker was forced to listen and actually consider what I said because he hadn't read Wealth of Nations.

The silver-lining of there being so many transparent lies about socialism, is that disproving them doesn't take much effort as long as you know what you are talking about.

I've personally engaged with right-wingers online ranting about Venezuela's socialist dictatorship, and how this is proof that "Socialism Always Fails"(tm).
At which point I like to ask why it's working in Bolivia. I always get met with "What are you talking about?" replies to that.

There’s just one problem with all this bashing of socialism: Bolivia.

Since 2006, Bolivia has been run by socialists every bit as militant as Venezuela’s. But as economist Omar Zambrano has argued, the country has experienced a spectacular run of economic growth and poverty reduction with no hint of the chaos that has plagued Venezuela. While inflation spirals toward the thousand-percent mark in Venezuela, in Bolivia it runs below 4 percent a year.

bolivia.PNG

Turns out the difference between Bolivia and Venezuela has nothing to do with abstract ideological labels, and everything to do with fiscal prudence.

Bolivia is expected to be the fastest growing economy in Latin America this year. Bolivia has achieved this success despite open hostility from Washington and the IMF.

It is important to know what socialism actually is, not just what it does (i.e. Social Security, Medicare, minimum wage, etc.).
So if you are unclear of what the broad stroke of socialism is, read this short article by Albert Einstein.

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Song of the lark's picture

I'm inclined to think that there are some serious problems there. Glad to hear it's not socialism since as a democratic socialist I'm a bit put off to the constant bashing of socialism often citing Venezuela.

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and the article by Einstein well worth reading. Apparently he had more on his mind than just numbers and knew what was up with capitalism even back then. After reading it he is even more of a genius ( if that's even possible) Imo.

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Yeh, it was ideology all along

It is possible, of course, to argue that uniting behind a white male against challengers who are female or people are color is justified by ideological, policy, and strategic preferences. And there’s likely a great deal of truth to that in these cases: The candidates challenging Cuomo, Crowley, Menendez, and Ashford are running to their left. They are advocating things like abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “Medicare for All,” an end to the war on terror, and a far higher minimum wage.

The Democratic establishment tends to despise progressive platforms like that — such views, after all, are a direct threat to the interests of the corporate, Wall Street, and weapons manufacturing funding base that sustains the party — and so it’s not just plausible but likely that their opposition to those candidates really is driven by ideology, rather than demographic preferences or bigotry.

But that’s not the ethos or philosophy that the Democratic establishment embraces when it’s their centrist, pro-status-quo candidates who are women, LGBT people, or people of color, at which point it becomes a moral obligation to support them and evidence of bigotry if one refuses to do so. Indeed, supporters of Sanders throughout 2015 and 2016 endlessly and vocally insisted that their preference was due to ideology, not misogyny, yet they still had the label “Bernie bro” affixed to their forehead.

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Cassiodorus's picture

The one in which there are no social classes, and the one in which people are able to work for what they themselves value rather than being prisoners of what (in a society based on commodities, property, and money) Marx called "value."

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

Azazello's picture

@Cassiodorus
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSGuBNopzBw width:400 height:240]

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

thanatokephaloides's picture

Socialists also know little about those they wish to help. Their language is a dead giveaway of their ignorance. In the Twentieth Century, socialists laced their diatribes about industrial capitalism with jargon, such as “dialectical materialism” and “class consciousness”. Their spiritual heirs decry “systems of oppression” and exhort people to be “woke”. No average man speaks or thinks in those terms. Yet, he is the one who must be “educated".

Although the phrase virtue signaling did not exist in the 1930s, the concept did.

Oh how delicious! Scratch that itch!

I've been complaining for absolutely fucking years (Pink Floyd, "Money") about how Socialists, especially Marxists, crawl waaaaaay too far into theory and leave their main audience of ordinary working folks dazed and confused!

Ever hear of K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid!), comrade?

Fuck theory! It's the bottom line for the workers that is everything and the only thing! Let your speaking stick to that! It was good enough for the Haymarket Martyrs; it's good enough today! "This is what we want, and this is how we propose to get there!"

A most excellent Essay, gjohnsit! This anarcho-socialist thanks you most profoundly for posting it!

Give rose

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@thanatokephaloides As one of those intellectuals, I'd speak a quiet word of warning about turning on intellectuals and scholars. Not that I think you would do this, Than, but it's usually not a sign of anything good happening politically when intellectual pursuits and those who pursue them are bashed in the name of populism.

While I guess nobody wants to be told they need to learn something, the truth is that workers often do need to learn something, just like everybody does. They often are propagandized. It may not be the best marketing tool to tell them so, but there is a cost to not telling them so, too. It could lead to intellectual dishonesty, and, at worst, creating another category of human being who can't be told they're wrong. This is what makes dealing with propaganda difficult: nobody wants to be told they're a dupe. But if they are a dupe, can it be a transformative action to refuse to tell them so for fear of giving offense?

Of course, we've all met the kind of people gjohnsit describes, but the problem with them is not that they are intellectuals, but that they pile unwarranted arrogance on top of an already thorny problem.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

detroitmechworks's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal for talking to working class folks is the idea of "Hard Work". Nearly every reasonable human being appreciates effort.

Everything good requires hard work, and the rich refuse to engage in any of it. Intellectual study is hard work. Physical labor is Hard Work. Pushing papers is not hard work. Filling out forms is not hard work. Sitting in judgement is not hard work. Lying and stealing is the laziest activity you can engage in.

It seems to resonate. Anything worth doing requires hard work.

Hell, I had this goofy Idea for my lecture series that I haven't fully explained yet about the idea of work being literally paid in "Hours". It's impossible for anybody to earn more than 24 hours of work in a day. EVER. That should be the standard, IMHO, and if anybody claims their work is worth more than 24 hours, they're lying.

(How would overtime work in such a system? Mandatory time and a half for every hour over 8. Quadruple pay for anything over 16. Yep, that means at the 17th Hour, you've earned 24 hours, and there's no further benefit to working through sleep time...

Yes, it's incredibly socialist! How can anybody create value if they're limited in their daily earnings! What if somebody wants to work for less and gain business that way? The entire concept reduces humans to poverty!

To which I say, anything that makes the capitalists job harder is fine by me.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

thanatokephaloides's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

Of course, we've all met the kind of people gjohnsit describes, but the problem with them is not that they are intellectuals, but that they pile unwarranted arrogance on top of an already thorny problem.

Exactly. We're talking about the kind of pseudo-intellectual dweebs who are to the social sciences what those who insist on employing calculus where only basic algebra would more than suffice are to math (and physics). They use theory to claim superiority to their audience, which is never the way to win said audience over.

Genuine intellectuals do the necessary Hard Work to make their points in ways their audiences can easily understand (h/t to dmw!). Smile

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal @Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal
Vladimir not John. I'm sure he used all sorts of big words with certitude, as if that proved that he was on a par with all these "weak-kneed, phony intellectuals", who have devoted their lives in pursuit of knowledge, but who use big words too. I'm sure there's a lot of bullshit in academia but learning requires honest questioning and debate.

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Beware the bullshit factories.

@thanatokephaloides

I've been complaining for absolutely fucking years (Pink Floyd, "Money") about how Socialists, especially Marxists, crawl waaaaaay too far into theory and leave their main audience of ordinary working folks dazed and confused!

It's not so much theory as it is the words they use.
When you rely on obscure terminology that very few people know, then chances are your understanding of the topic is weak. Or you intend to confuse things.

You see this with economics, and it's intentional. For example:
term used real meaning

private equity leverage buy-out
leverage debt
yield interest
t-bill, coupon, treasury all are bonds from the government
competitive layoffs, wage cuts
equities stocks
hedge fund wealthy investors acting like an investment bank

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thanatokephaloides's picture

@gjohnsit

It's not so much theory as it is the words they use.
When you rely on obscure terminology that very few people know, then chances are your understanding of the topic is weak. Or you intend to confuse things.

Exactly. And it's the latter -- those who deliberately intend to sow confusion -- for whom I have the worst umbrage. You use an example from economics:

You see this with economics, and it's intentional. For example:
term used real meaning

private equity leverage buy-out
leverage debt
yield interest
t-bill, coupon, treasury all are bonds from the government
competitive layoffs, wage cuts
equities stocks
hedge fund wealthy investors acting like an investment bank

My corresponding example posted above is those who use calculus when talking to the public, when basic algebra would have expressed the same ideas with better understanding to more people. It's nothing more than a deliberate attempt to withhold that same understanding from as many people as possible. And I hate it. For that selfsame reason.

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

GreyWolf's picture

For you to wield your pen for us is an honor.

Now about that vote on what's for dinner ... greywolf.jpg

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I think enhanced safety net, a floor that keeps you from falling into the abyss. It would go beyond food, shelter into education and health. To have the freedom to change work without toiling at a job you hate in exchange for the health insurance.
When I think communism I think commune, where everybody takes a turn swabbing the toilets and hauling the garbage. Instead we have a system where business and government conspire to exploit it's citizens.
While the latest outcry is the lack of people to enter the STEM fields, the best the US can do is to make available expensive student loans. So in the end, it's really capitalism that rules the country no matter it's needs. Capitalism is the hammer that sees all problems as nails.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

it's also true that capitalism attracts its share of nutjobs, as practically every philosophy does (look at some of the Randroids) and capitalism also speaks a language the working man can't understand (have you ever listened to someone try to explain derivatives, or some of the even more exotic investment instruments on Wall St?)

They have two things going for them:

One, they have one language for selling themselves to the working class and another for talking amongst themselves, and up until fairly recently, they've kept these two languages reasonably separate. Since 2008, that has not been the case, since somebody had to try to justify their behavior leading up to the crisis, and it's impossible to justify that behavior outside of capitalism's own insider language.

Two, the working class wants to believe them, desperately. Wouldn't you rather live in a meritocracy where everybody gets what they deserve and everything is determined by individual ability and dedication, rather than beneath an entrenched and largely undeserving aristocracy, who are arguably psychopaths bent on apocalypse?

That's why socialism has to provide proof of the pudding whereas capitalism can spin fairy tales from now until world's end: the only thing that makes socialism palatable for the average person is its ability to redress economic pain and political injustice. If it can't provide such redress, and fairly quickly too, it will be abandoned. Capitalism, on the other hand, can drive people into poverty, strip them of their rights, murder hundreds of thousands of people for no reason, commit acts of torture and false imprisonment, poison the water and the air, and generally turn the world into a charnel house, and it will still receive tens of millions of adherents, because the story it tells is an inherently happy one, or at least a just one. You get what you deserve. Capitalism's got a list and it's checking it twice.

If you get coal in your stocking, you know why.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal than socialism. Fairy tales for the fairly desperate. Wink

beneath an entrenched and largely undeserving aristocracy, who are arguably psychopaths bent on apocalypse?

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@QMS What you quoted was me describing capitalism. Sorry if I didn't make that clear!

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

Two, the working class wants to believe them, desperately. Wouldn't you rather live in a meritocracy where everybody gets what they deserve and everything is determined by individual ability and dedication, rather than beneath an entrenched and largely undeserving aristocracy, who are arguably psychopaths bent on apocalypse?
...
Capitalism, on the other hand, can drive people into poverty, strip them of their rights, murder hundreds of thousands of people for no reason, commit acts of torture and false imprisonment, poison the water and the air, and generally turn the world into a charnel house, and it will still receive tens of millions of adherents, because the story it tells is an inherently happy one, or at least a just one. You get what you deserve.

You got that right: free-market fundamentalism is utopian.
There is only one BIG problem with the "You get what you deserve" fairy tale - everyone knows that "Life isn't fair".
Those two statements are incompatible. It requires an Orwellian level of indoctrination to accept both statements.

That's why socialism has to provide proof of the pudding whereas capitalism can spin fairy tales from now until world's end: the only thing that makes socialism palatable for the average person is its ability to redress economic pain and political injustice. If it can't provide such redress, and fairly quickly too, it will be abandoned.

Which is impossible because the capitalists crush genuine socialists countries every time. Usually with violence.

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Lookout's picture

brainwashed most folks my/our? age. People were taught to fear communism which = socialism which = authoritarian rule. Old lessons are difficult to unlearn. Like Twain said..
it is easier to fool people than to convince them they've been fooled...or something like that.

Great conversation this week with Chris Hedges and David Harvey on the future of global capitalism (27 min)
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hgszeNb8wU]

From my view featuring functional worker coops and working examples of socialist organizations would help educate folks (and you better not look for MSM to do the job!). It is hard to argue with success.

As to Venezuela, I think the US shares much of the blame for their dire financial situation due to our sanctions and CIA promoted dissent within their country...much as we did to Allende.
https://telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Socialism-Hasnt-Failed-Venezuela.-...

Thanks for the essay and discussing the topic! I especially liked your simple come backs...

For instance, when the capitalist tries to equate capitalism with freedom, you can ask him, "At what point in your workday, when your boss is telling you what to do, when to do it, and where to do it, do you feel free?"
And when someone says that we should run the government like a business, you ask "How does the top-down, authoritarian structure of a corporation look representative to you?"
And when some Libertarian says, "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner," ask the simple question, "When in the history of democracy has that ever happened?"

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

thanatokephaloides's picture

@Lookout

cold war propaganda brainwashed most folks my/our? age. People were taught to fear communism which = socialism which = authoritarian rule. Old lessons are difficult to unlearn. Like Twain said..

punctuation adjusted for format change

Leninism/Stalinism set the Socialist cause back some 100 years, for the exact reason you specify. And old lessons are indeed difficult to unlearn.

The problem is that under supposedly "freer" capitalism, we still end up with authoritarian rule. Sad

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

Lookout's picture

@thanatokephaloides

rules with an iron fist, and capitalism ultimately leads to oligarchy.

The gist of Piketty's book is simple. Returns to capital are rising faster than economies are growing. The wealthy are getting wealthier while everybody else is struggling. Inequality will widen to the point where it becomes unsustainable – both politically and economically – unless action is taken to redistribute income and wealth. Piketty favours a graduated wealth tax and 80% income tax for those on the highest salaries.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/02/thomas-piketty-capital-in-...

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

jobu's picture

Your wrote:

His response was of disbelief, "Adam Smith? The Invisible Hand? You read Adam Smith?"

Adam Smith is your run of the mill 'free market, small gubment conservative's go to guy for a defense of their ideology. But as you suggest, they've never read WoN's. That's why when you quote actual text from the actual book, heads explode:

The interest of the dealers [referring to stock owners, manufacturers, and merchants], however, in any particular branch of trade or manufacture, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, and absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens.

The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

IF these two quotes don't work, then tell the Sunshine Patriot Tea Party guy dressed up like Tom Paine that Tom Paine was Karl Marx before there was a Karl Marx.

Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.

This is putting the matter on a general principle, and perhaps it is best to do so; for if we examine the case minutely it will be found that the accumulation of personal property is, in many instances, the effect of paying too little for the labor that produced it; the consequence of which is that the working hand perishes in old age, and the employer abounds in affluence.

It is, perhaps, impossible to proportion exactly the price of labor to the profits it produces; and it will also be said, as an apology for the injustice, that were a workman to receive an increase of wages daily he would not save it against old age, nor be much better for it in the interim. Make, then, society the treasurer to guard it for him in a common fund; for it is no reason that, because he might not make a good use of it for himself, another should take it.

Brand Name Dems are equally ignorant of these quotes, or, if not, willfully reject them as a useful counter argument.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@jobu You are so right that they've never read it. I haven't read it either, not from cover to cover, but at least I've read excerpts. Sometimes I doubt they've done even that. And it's *their* holy book, for Christ's sakes!

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver