Now that I have your attention, and have been red-flagged by Homeland Security, I'm serious. When you actually read Marx's words, independent of communism, they sound pretty much right on the money. Capitalism is set up to help the rich get richer and keep the poor in their place. There's no doubt that in American culture we have boo-shwa-zee and proletariet, the owner class and the working class. Those who make the products and those who own the people who make the products. We've moved away from use-value, the value of something being measured by its usefulness, and are INFECTED with surplus-value, the difference between making a pair of jeans for 3 dollars and selling them for 50. Even all the things we count as necessities, like computers, pale in use-value compared to things like milk.
The main problem I have with capitalism is the same as Marx: accumulation. In today's capitalism, someone's wealth has nothing to do with what they're worth. It's how much capital they have accumulated, usually by exploiting anyone who doesn't have as much.
Reading Marx, and use-value, exchange-value, surplus-value, I think about how rediculous money is. Think about it. There's not even any gold to back it up anymore. IT'S PAPER! Apparently, this computer I'm using right now is worth 1,000 pieces of worthless green paper, while the milk I drank this morning is worth 2 pieces of worthless green paper a gallon. How crazy does that sound?? And checks and credit cards are just stupid. I don't have any actual pieces of green paper but I have this piece of paper with puppies on it, I wrote on this piece of paper, and if you contact these people, they tell you that I can get the right amount of green paper.
By the way, agreeing with Marx doesn't make me a communist. Communism is a form of government and easily corrupted. Marxism is a SOCIAL THEORY, and in my opinion, a pretty accurate account of how things are done these days in the good ol' US of A.
You are not the contents of walet. You are not the car you drive or the job you have. You are not your frackin' khakis.
Vive la Revolution, B
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
I don't know about frackin' but frickin' works. I agree. The problem with Social Theories is that people get involved.
Although we are colled to bring about the Kingdom of God here and now, I am afriad we won't see it's full fruition until Christ's return.
Who are we then? What defines our identity? Relationship plain and simple. Not who you are but whose you are. That's the key. "To unlock this mystery. Of girls and their emotions play it back in slow motion so I can better understand the comlex infrastructure known as the female mind." It's so darn catchy.
Did Mustoe give you my number? How's Joetown? I know you like that Chipotle.
Frackin' is the Battlestar Galactica equivalent of frickin', Adam.
Best show on television.
I totally agree with what you said, and I've been agreeing with Marx for years without actually reading him. Anyway, the thing I really want to comment on is the sweet use of Fight Club at the end of the post. It was discreet on right on point. Nice buddy.
In a social and political ethics course I took, I answered some question on Rawl's original position and the professor stops dead to say, "What are you, a [frackin'] Socialist?!?" And he meant it. But truth be told, I am. Nothing wrong with thinking outside the American regime, cause it's not exactly working at maximum efficiency. However, I do think true laissez-faire capitalism has it's merits. But again, the same problem as communism, people intervene.
I, too, agree with much of what Marx writes as some kind of general view of how people should relate and act in relationship to one another. I am at a loss as to how to live as a Marxist within a capitalist society. We all know the ugliness of capitalism at its worst. History, on the other hand, has never seen Marxism at its best. Marxism is also linked with atheism. A challenge is to theorize on economic life as a true Christian. Like so many before us, we must live and work as Christian disciples within a world that is bent in an entirely different direction. Acts describes the early church as holding all goods in common. Many would say that Marx is really good stuff. It just doesn't work. JB
Definitely check out some Cornel West.
Post a Comment