Is This What a Proletarian Revolution Looks Like?
As I was completing my last post, I realized that what scares me more than those near-term impacts is the long-term cost of added government regulation and spending in the wake of this meltdown -- and a bold new chorus of socialist attacks on free markets and capitalism. The $700B being considered by congress will be a drop in the bucket of American losses if this event sparks the proletarian revolution many here and abroad yearn for in America.
From Wikipedia: Karl Marx posited that socialism would be achieved via class struggle and a proletarian revolution, it being the transitional stage between capitalism and communism.
"My object in life is to dethrone God and destroy capitalism" & "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." -- Karl Marx
On a lighter note, as I was looking for John Galt's response to the Marx quotes above, I ran across this parody of Atlas Shrugged in 1000 words. It's my favorite book, but I couldn't help chuckling at the critique -- in a mocking sort of way ;-) If you haven't read Atlas Shrugged yet, buy it now and I'll see you at Galt's Gulch!
Labels: atlas shrugged, john galt, karl marx, proletarian revolution, socialist
Posted by VC Dan | 9/26/2008
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Comments (2)
There are other socialist school of thought (like the Italian) that push for government intervention, but Marx form requires a complete overthrow of government from the bottom up. It seems to me like the Bail out/rescue plan/whatever they call it now - is from the top down, if anything it moves far away from the "whithering of the state" as Marx hoped.
I'm no Marx expert, but this step still feels like part of the Marx transition from Capitalism to Communism, at least at a high level. A couple days after my post, the post "Bailout marks Karl Marx's comeback" caught my eye. In it, the author shares Marx's Proposal Number Five from the Communist Manifesto: “centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.”
That sounds eerily similar to some of the bailout proposals being circulated.
Maybe we're just talking about the logistics of transitioning from democracy to socialism to communism, but the end result worries me just the same.
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