Monday, April 26, 2010

Homesick

Glass half-Full:

Idealistic systems for engineering a classless society are pipe dreams. Get real. Marx and Mao, though they had a few accurate analyses, have been disproven as a source for societal construction. Find something good to do and get to work so you can contribute to the commonwealth instead of sponging from it.

I think the point Marx would make is that "finding something good to do" so that you might "get to work and contribute to the commonwealth" is something that a system dedicated to capital accumulation inevitably precludes, since the purpose of production is to produce capital, not "commonwealth."

Americans are heartsick for want of purposeful work; most would jump at the chance just to pay their bills. That these opportunities are not forthcoming, however, does not owe to any dearth in American ingenuity, ambition, education, or will; but to the simple fact that the boss has denied them. Such opportunities are not for the idle American to "create," since this is a power too great but for that monopoly class of employers whose contribution to the "economy" is never less than a tautological contribution to themselves, with incidental effects for everyone else.

It happens that Marx was centrally interested in these questions, seeing in the need for creative, purposeful work a fundamental human trait. The obstacles which confront us in the full realization of this trait exist not within ourselves, but in our relationship to that class which has assumed this role for itself. For Marx, a "classless society" would mean one in which the possibilities for purposeful work would be denied to no one.

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