Happy Birthday Karl Marx

[malaise]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-I.pdf

[Starry Messenger]

1. Happy Birthday Uncle Karl.

I just posted this on Facebook and in SP too. A fun and pithy quote that rings true of the 1% today:

[malaise]

2. Profound - 2018 should be quite a bicentenial

LOL - check this out

http://www.thelocal.de/national/20130503-49509.html#.UYbHecqyDIc
<snip>
A German artist is celebrating what would have been Karl Marx's 195th birthday by unveiling 500 gnome-like statues of him in his home town. He wants to provoke people into thinking about the philosopher again.

A German artist is celebrating what would have been Karl Marx's 195th birthday by unveiling 500 gnome-like statues of him in his home town. He wants to provoke people into thinking about the philosopher again.

Ottmar Hörl, a sculptor from the Bavarian city of Nuremburg, has installed the one-metre high, bright red statues of Marx around the Porta Nigra Roman gate in the southern city of Trier - in honour of what would have been his 195th birthday this Sunday.

Hörl - an artist with fierce political beliefs - told the crowd at the unveiling on Thursday that he felt Marx - born in Prussia on May 5, 1818, was the spiritual father of Communism and as such was an oft-misunderstood philosopher.

Marx made Trier his home, and the house he lived in is now a museum.

[Starry Messenger]

3. That looks cool!

That will be a sight to see when finished:

[Newest Reality]

4. Thanks Karl!

Your efforts, research and insight are proving to be on spot and may you rise out of the infamy that the west shoved you in and find your place in history as a giant in your field and quite an accurate prophet on the nature and outcome of capitalism.

Happy Birthday.

[malaise]

5. I often wonder if the 1% didn't study Marx while making sure

they denigrated him for everyone else.

[socialist_n_TN]

19. Great minds and all malaise......

I've said the same thing, that the truest Marxists today are the big time capitalists. They've followed his proscriptions to a tee while vilifying his to the masses.

[malaise]

20. That's my view as well

Hopefully the masses will wake the hell up.

[Doc_Technical]

6. Karl Marx isn't so smart

He didn't know that "The Hammers" is the nickname
of West Ham United Football Club.

[byeya]

7. No, sadly, his education was spotty as was shown here

[byeya]

8. I like saying this: Uncle Whiskers made a lot of mistakes but he got it right when it counted!

[byeya]

9. Capital vs the health of the laborer: The Hawks Nest, WV, Tunnel murders(pulled off a Google search)

Nobody knows for sure how many people died; 760 is the number you hear. Nobody knows for sure how many were buried on the Martha White Farm and other places in Nicholas County.
Details of the Hawk's Nest Tunnel tragedy, considered to be the nation's worst industrial disaster, have successfully been kept under wraps for years, but now that Union Carbide has moved on, people feel they can at last talk about the horrible details of this shameful time.
During the 1930s Depression, men were desperate for work of any kind. When word got out that there were jobs in the West Virginia hills, hundreds of black migrant workers from the Deep South hopped trains and rode north to the coal mining fields. But the jobs were not mining coal. Instead, a company needed workers to drill a tunnel through Gauley Mountain, located between Ansted and Gauley Bridge in Fayette County, West Virginia.
The 3.8-mile Hawk's Nest Tunnel was an engineering marvel. The tunnel's purpose was to divert water from the New River through the Gauley Mountain and down a drop of 162 feet to provide electricity to the Electro Metallurgical Company, a subsidiary of the Union Carbide Corporation.
Construction of the tunnel began in June 1930. Workers moved forward from 250 to 300ft per week through 99.44% pure silica, 32-36ft in diameter. Experts knew that miners who inhaled silica dust would contract silicosis, a deadly lung ailment. But the company ordered that the workers use a dry drilling technique that would create more dust because this method was faster and cheaper.

The Rinehart & Dennis Company from Charlottesville, Virginia, was awarded the two-year contract from Union Carbide for construction of the tunnel. Engineers from Union Carbide were in charge of overseeing the operation. Of the hundreds of people employed, at least two-thirds of the workers were African-American migrants. The black diggers emerged from the hole in the mountain covered with clouds of white dust - ghostly. The interior of the tunnel was a white cloud of silica, impairing vision as well as clogging the lungs.

Many accidents crippled or killed workers before the silicosis could choke them to death. Masks were supplied only to inspectors and company men inside the tunnel.
Workers began dying two months after they first entered the tunnel

[malaise]

10. This is too sad

The things done to the African people on this earth to enrich the white man still shock me.

[byeya]

11. At least a fourth were white but the local West Virginians knew it was deadly to dig in that

mountain, so in spite of the dire conditions of the Great Depression, they opted to eke out a living and forego the sure death of silicosis.

[malaise]

16. Poor white people have been treated very badly as well

[edbermac]

12. I heard he was even more funnier than Groucho.

[Ken Burch]

14. He was funnier than Zeppo, too, although that's not saying much.

n/t.

[Ken Burch]

13. One thing to remember...Karl Marx actually said "I'm not a Marxist"

Another thing...Marxism(and, for the record, I'm also not a Marxist)isn't Marxism-Leninism(the term Stalin used for all the murderous right-wing shit he pulled).

Marxism-Leninism is what failed and then died in 1989. Marx himself still has plenty to offer.

[malaise]

17. +1,000

Funny that the Chinese correctly called the Russians revisionists and then introduced fascism

[Ken Burch]

15. I'd strongly recommend reading the play "Marx in Soho", by Howard Zinn

(yes, THAT Howard Zinn).

It give a very different picture of the man from the capitalist(and Stalinist)stereotypes we all grew up seeing(at least, those of us who are young enough to have lived a significant part of our lives during the Cold War).

[malaise]

18. Thanks

[marmar]

21. k/r

Interesting interview with Professor/economist Richard Wolff on how Marxism influences him: