IP: Marx & Engels on the Enron Syndrome and NYSE under 7,000

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

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From: "Janos G." <janos451 () earthlink net>
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 00:30:59 -0700
To: "jg" <janos451 () earthlink net>
Subject: Marx & Engels on the Enron Syndrome and NYSE under 7,000

[Long before being subjected to Neo-Thomism at St. Benedict's College in
Kansas, I had too many compulsory semesters of Dialectical Materialism in
Budapest.

In a somewhat oversimplified manner, I'd characterize both as Stuff &
Nonsense, leaving the decision on which is which to others. So, I am *not*
quoting from the 1848 "Communist Manifesto" here with the idea of
truth-telling, only to amuse with some of the surface validity of what came
forth so long ago, from the BM.]

<<The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the
instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and
with them the whole relations of society.  Conservation of the old modes
of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first
condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes.  Constant
revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social
conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the
bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones...

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the
bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe.  It must nestle
everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.

The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market, given
a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country.
To the great chagrin of reactionaries, it has drawn from under the feet
of industry the national ground on which it stood.  All old-established
national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed.
They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life
and death question for all civilized nations, by industries that no
longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the
remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at
home, but in every quarter of the globe.

...In place of the old wants,
satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring
for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes.  In
place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we
have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of
nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production.  The
intellectual creations of individual nations become common property.
National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more
impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there
arises a world literature. [Karl and Fred might have been thinking of
TV.]...

The lower strata of the middle class -- the small tradespeople,
shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and
peasants -- all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly
because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which
Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with
the large capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is
rendered worthless by new methods of production.  Thus, the proletariat
is recruited from all classes of the population...

...In times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the
progress of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within
the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring
character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift,
and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in
its hands.  Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the
nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the
bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion
of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of
comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole...

The "dangerous class," the social scum, that passively rotting mass
thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there,
be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions
of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of
reactionary intrigue. [Arthur Andersen?]

In the condition of the proletariat, those of old society at large are
already virtually swamped.  The proletarian is without property; his
relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with
the bourgeois family relations; modern industry labor, 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.

All the preceding classes that got the upper hand sought to fortify
their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their
conditions of appropriation.  The proletarians cannot become masters of
the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own
previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous
mode of appropriation.  They have nothing of their own to secure and to
fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and
insurances of, individual property. ["Securities"? Hmmmm.] >>


~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Janos Gereben/SF
janos451 () earthlink net



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