Hey Marx

Marx’s essay, On the Jewish Question, originally published in 1844 contains the following:

What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.…. Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities…. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange…. The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general.

More Marx and Engels in the Communist Party Manifesto

Capitalism has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom -- Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-labourers.

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i. e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.

Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for his maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour,[35] is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by increase of the work exacted in a given time or by increased speed of the machinery, etc.

Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the over-looker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.

No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far, at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.

The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations, modern industrial labour, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.

The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.[45]

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence:

Abolition of private property.

We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man's own labour, which property is alleged to be the ground work of all personal freedom, activity and independence.

In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.

And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.

Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.

On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.

But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the whole bourgeoisie in chorus.

The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion than that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.

He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production.

For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial.

Our bourgeois, not content with having the wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each others' wives.

Bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with, is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.

The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality. 

The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation,[47] must constitute itself the nation, it is, so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.

Nevertheless in the most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common p!an.

8. Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction[50] between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.[51]

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc., etc.

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The aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waved the proletarian alms-bag in front for a banner. But the people, so often as it joined them, saw on their hindquarters the old feudal coats of arms, and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter.

This school of Socialism dissected with great acuteness the contradictions in the conditions of modern production. It laid bare the hypocritical apologies of economists. It proved, incontrovertibly, the disastrous effects of machinery and division of labour; the concentration of capital and land in a few hands; overproduction and crises; it pointed out the inevitable ruin of the petty bourgeois and peasant, the misery of the proletariat, the anarchy in production, the crying inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the industrial war of extermination between nations, the dissolution of old moral bonds, of the old family relations, of the old nationalities.

In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.

In all these movements they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.

Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

WORKING PEOPLE OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!

No more lattes or hot yoga…

Say not of me that weakly I declined
The labours of my sires, and fled the sea,
The towers we founded and the lamps we lit,
But rather say: In the afternoon of time
A strenuous family dusted from its hands
The sand of granite, and beholding far
Along the sounding coast its pyramids
And tall memorials catch the dying sun,
Smiled well content, and to this childish task
Around the fire addressed its evening hours.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Capitalism Defined from the Book Envisioning Real Utopias by Erik Olin Wright

Capitalism is a way of organizing the economic activities of a society which can be defined along two major thoroughfares; one the actors of the class relationship and two the coordinates of economic coordination.

Class relations are the social relations through which the means of production are owned and power is exercised over their use. In capitalism the means of production are privately owned and their use is controlled by the owners or their surrogates. The means of production by themselves cannot produce anything; they have to be set in motion by human labour. In capitalism this labour is provided by the workers who do not own the means of production and who, in order to acquire an income, are hired by capitalist firms “to work” the means of production. The fundamental class relation is between capitalist and workers. Of course this is highly simplified view of class structure while in actual capitalist countries there is a variety of other class locations loosely grouped under the title “middle class.”

Economic coordination in capitalism is accomplished primarily through mechanisms of decentralized and voluntary exchange by privately contracting parties-or what is generally called “free markets” –through which the prices and quantities of the goods and services produced are determined.

Market coordination is conventionally contrasted with authoritative state coordination in which the power of the state is used to allocate resources for different purposes. The famous phrase “the invisible hand” captures the basic idea; individuals and firms, simply pursing their own private interests, engage in bargaining and voluntary exchanges with other individuals and firms, and out of this uncoordinated set of micro-interactions comes an economic system that is more or less coordinated at the aggregate level.

The combination of these two features; class relations and economic coordination generate the characteristic competitive drive for profits and capital accumulation of capitalistic firms. Each firm in order to survive over time must compete successfully with other firms. Firms that innovate lower their costs of production and increase productivity can undercut rivals, increase their profits and thus expand at the expense of other firms. Each firm faces these competitive pressures and thus in general all firms are forced to seek innovation of one sort or another in order to survive. The resulting relentless drive for profits generates the striking dynamism of capitalism relative to all forms of economic organization.

This of course is a simplified and pure version of capitalism. As most economic sociologists stress no capitalistic economy could function effectively or even survive it it consisted exclusively of the institutions of private property and market competition. Many other institutional arrangements are needed to make capitalism actually work and are present in all real capitalistic economies.

Some capitalism has strong affirmative states that regulate many aspects of the market and empower workers in various ways to control certain aspects of the labor process and in other capitalistic states both firms and workers are organized into various kinds of collective associations that provide significant forms of coordination distinct from both market and state coordination (pg 35 Envisioning real Utopias).

Trade associations, unions, chambers of commerce and other kinds of associations help constitute what some people have called “organized capitalism.” All varieties of capitalism also contain a significant domain and economic activity that occurs outside both the market and state regulations especially economic activity within households and kin networks, but also within the broader social settings often referred to as community (pg 36 Envisioning Real Utopias).

Eleven Criticisms of Capitalism

One of the central task of socialists is to convince people that capitalism creates such a range of undesirable consequences that one should at least entertain the idea that an alternative to capitalism might be possible and is in fact even desirable.

1. Capitalism class relations perpetuate eliminable forms of humans suffering.

2. Capitalism blocks the universalization of conditions for expansive human flourishing.

3. Capitalism perpetuates eliminable deficits in individual freedom and autonomy.

4. Capitalism violates liberal egalitarian principles of social justice.

5. Capitalism is inefficient in certain crucial respects.

6. Capitalism has a systematic bias towards consumerism.

7. Capitalism is environmentally destructive.

8. Capitalist commodification threatens important broadly held values.

9. Capitalism in a world of nation states fuels militarism and imperialism.

10. Capitalism corrodes community.

11. Capitalism limits democracy.

Adbusters

Is a glossy magazine that uses the supply chain of capitalism to distribute a magazine which is highly critical of capitalism...they clearly state they want to jam modern society and awaken people to the danger of the road, we are travelling...the magazine has orgins in canada i have heard...and having spent most of my life in canada i am relatively proud...as far as countries go we have a good one...we should not sell our resources to foreign ownership...resources will be needed by the people and we should all benefit...not just a few shareholders and bankers...here specifically, i am referring to a potash company, in saskatechewan.

I am enjoy reading adbusters and commend them for bringing the plight of the palestine people into view

a mythic war in an information age will not get much global sympathy...that particular situation has been going on now for over thirty years