"There is a sense in which the whole of Marx's writing boils down to several embarrassing questions: Why is it that the capitalist West has accumulated more resources than human history has ever witnessed, yet appears powerless to overcome poverty, starvation, exploitation, and inequality? What are the mechanisms by which affluence for a minority seems to breed hardship and indignity for the many? Why does private wealth seem to go hand in hand with public squalor?"
Is there "something in the nature of capitalism itself which generates deprivation and inequality, as surely as Charlie Sheen generates gossip?"
That is from The Chronicle of Higher Education, and from an article there by Terry Eagleton called "In Praise of Marx":
http://chronicle.com/article/In-Praise-of-Marx/127027/?sid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en
I think those are damn good questions. I read the entire article, and it gave me a new outlook on Marx. He was a better guy than I thought.
Let me know what you think. Leave a comment.
PS: Don't be scared off. We studied this stuff in college, and I didn't catch a disease.
-- Roger
© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle
2 comments:
Marx was an idealist with practical solutions to society and its problems, what other people did to this is the problem with folks who become leaders and dictators, as is usually the problem with how idealists ideas are subverted to what the "powers that be" will usually take and subvert these origional ideas and then use to their own ends for power. I am afraid this is just how it is with human kind.
Yes, Marx's ideas have been twisted and distorted, like Jesus Christ's ideas have been twisted and distorted.
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