General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Chris Hedges: The Great Unraveling [View all]AOR
(692 posts)The working class of today has to find a way to build on that foundation while avoiding some of the more onerous mistakes of the past. Nothing is etched in stone, but you gotta have a foundation. Hope in ruling class electoral politics - as a political solution - is nothing more than a prescription of inaction and defeatism. Marx is a guide for the working class and getting a working class message out there.
Marxs Revenge: How Class Struggle Is Shaping the World
By Michael Schuman
http://business.time.com/2013/03/25/marxs-revenge-how-class-struggle-is-shaping-the-world/
"With workers around the world burdened by joblessness and stagnant incomes, Marxs critique that capitalism is inherently unjust and self-destructive cannot be so easily dismissed"
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"Karl Marx was supposed to be dead and buried. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and Chinas Great Leap Forward into capitalism, communism faded into the quaint backdrop of James Bond movies or the deviant mantra of Kim Jong Un. The class conflict that Marx believed determined the course of history seemed to melt away in a prosperous era of free trade and free enterprise. The far-reaching power of globalization, linking the most remote corners of the planet in lucrative bonds of finance, outsourcing and borderless manufacturing, offered everybody from Silicon Valley tech gurus to Chinese farm girls ample opportunities to get rich. Asia in the latter decades of the 20th century witnessed perhaps the most remarkable record of poverty alleviation in human history all thanks to the very capitalist tools of trade, entrepreneurship and foreign investment. Capitalism appeared to be fulfilling its promise to uplift everyone to new heights of wealth and welfare."
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"Or so we thought. With the global economy in a protracted crisis, and workers around the world burdened by joblessness, debt and stagnant incomes, Marxs biting critique of capitalism that the system is inherently unjust and self-destructive cannot be so easily dismissed. Marx theorized that the capitalist system would inevitably impoverish the masses as the worlds wealth became concentrated in the hands of a greedy few, causing economic crises and heightened conflict between the rich and working classes. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, Marx wrote."
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"Thats not to say Marx was entirely correct. His dictatorship of the proletariat didnt quite work out as planned. But the consequence of this widening inequality is just what Marx had predicted: class struggle is back. Workers of the world are growing angrier and demanding their fair share of the global economy. From the floor of the U.S. Congress to the streets of Athens to the assembly lines of southern China, political and economic events are being shaped by escalating tensions between capital and labor to a degree unseen since the communist revolutions of the 20th century. How this struggle plays out will influence the direction of global economic policy, the future of the welfare state, political stability in China, and who governs from Washington to Rome. What would Marx say today? Some variation of: I told you so, says Richard Wolff, a Marxist economist at the New School in New York. The income gap is producing a level of tension that I have not seen in my lifetime.
"Tensions between economic classes in the U.S. are clearly on the rise. Society has been perceived as split between the 99% (the regular folk, struggling to get by) and the 1% (the connected and privileged superrich getting richer every day). In a Pew Research Center poll released last year, two-thirds of the respondents believed the U.S. suffered from strong or very strong conflict between rich and poor, a significant 19-percentage-point increase from 2009, ranking it as the No. 1 division in society."
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That leaves open a scary possibility: that Marx not only diagnosed capitalisms flaws but also the outcome of those flaws. If policymakers dont discover new methods of ensuring fair economic opportunity, the workers of the world may just unite. Marx may yet have his revenge."