Showing posts with label Karl Marx. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Karl Marx. Show all posts

2021-12-06

The Communist Family

From each according to his ability
To each according to his needs*

If you did not know the source of this you could easily mistake it for a description of the family.

After all in a family the family unit takes care of all of your needs from birth, and as you age you start to take on responsibilities according to your abilities. As an infant you are completely dependant for everything from feeding to moving about. As a child you can take on many responsibilities for yourself but are still financially dependent on the family. As an adolescent you may start working part-time to pay for some of your own wants but are still fully financially dependent on the family for food and shelter. Once you start higher education you probably work full time part of the year to pay for your expenses but may still be subsidized by the family unit.

Once you leave home and live on your own you finally become fully responsible for your own needs, though you might still receive some financial help from the rest of the family or you may provide some to it.

When you have your own family the cycle starts over again except now you may start financially assisting the family members that once assisted you when they reach retirement age and cease working and become more dependant on others for care.

All of this based on ability and need.

Something to remember the next time right wingers rant on about family values.


2010-12-12

Generation Inspired - Let Capitalism Fail



No comment required.

However, I cannot help but comment as I watch this and think about how we are supposed to react to the international response to the economic crisis and the measures being taken to save capitalism from collapse. What is happening is exactly what Karl Marx predicted except that he did nor foresee the use of a form of socialism for the rich to save capitalism. As governments world wide use austerity measures against workers to bail out the banks and corporations that have exploited them for years we are supposed to sit back and take it because there is no alternative.

But, there is an alternative. Let history happen. Let capitalism fail and build a new society from the ashes of the old.

2009-10-02

"Work" is a communist plot - Rush Limbaugh

LIMBAUGH: I've been mentioning this since I started this show. "Workers" is a communist word. "Workers" is a socialist, a Karl Marx word. Workers of the world unite, workers -- we don't have workers; we have citizens, we have employees. We have associates. When I worked at the Kansas City Royals, the team was owned by Ewing Kauffman, who also owned Marion Labs. He never called one person a worker or an employee. Everybody was an associate, from the custodial staff on up. Workers? All this little leftist lingo trickling into our lexicon.

Source: The Limbaugh Wire for 09/29/2009
So remember next time you see somebody working stop them and ask them what they are doing.

"Working. Are you a communist. Stop that right now and start associating."

2009-02-06

Building A New Society From The Collapse of Capitalism

This is the first of a series on the economic crisis opportunity.

Karl Marx said “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”. In other words we are all expected to contribute to society what we can and only expected to take what we need. Under socialism laziness and greed are both vices.

Unfortunately under modern capitalism greed is considered more of a virtue than a vice and has become the driving force of the economic system. It is greed that has brought capitalism to where it is today.

So is socialism the answer. Rather than try to insert a lengthy treatise into the middle of this post let us just all agree that we are not ready to move to that stage at this point in time.

But we do need to change our way of thinking and the way we live in this world for the good of the planet and it’s peoples.

Capitalism has simply gotten out of control, especially American capitalism where most corporations today operate on the principle that “corporate officers have a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value”, that is profits, without regards for employees or customers, or communities, or the broader public good.

We have seen it in our communities with the decline of local businesses and the growth of mega corporations. As owners become more disconnected from their businesses concerns for workers and customer value disappear to be replaced by the pursuit of, not just a fair profit, but maximized profit.

And we are all complicit as we sell out our friends and neighbours who worked in the locally owned businesses and local factories, for cheap goods produced abroad by near-slave labour.

Alongside greed, but driven by it, are false assumptions. The first false assumption is that wealth creation is all that matters, and wealth redistribution is an evil of socialism. The assumption being that as long as we keep creating wealth the rich will keep getting richer but enough “crumbs” will trickle down to working people and the poor to keep them happy. This is based on the same theory that sees recessions as the worst thing that could possibly happen. But it is a theory based on continuous and unlimited growth, a dangerous false assumption, The planet simply does not have the resources to support unlimited economic growth without self-destructing.

So where do we go from here. For the moment those responsible are still living their lavish lifestyles, pausing only to fly to Washington in their corporate jets to ask the common people to bail them out with their tax money. But the fact is that the American economy, and even the Canadian economy is so dominated by these mega corporations that their failure would have serious implications for working people.

In the short term governments need to keep the economy from collapsing, for the broader good, But they should not do it on the corporations terms but in a way that serves the common people. In the long term this is an opportunity to change the way the economy works – to an economy that serves the common good, not just corporate interests.

We have seen that countries with mixed economies, in particularly Canada, with a greater degree of government regulation and involvement in the economy have done better than the American pure capitalist approach. We need to learn from that, and build on it. But we need to go much further in building an economy for the people and the planet rather than an economy just for the corporations.

We can build an economy that can provide everyone with a decent quality of life if we responsibly and sustainably utilize and distribute the planet's resources.

Future posts will look in more detail at what we need to do in the short and long term.