The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.”(Marx, Capital, Chapter 3
Marx is passe’, I know. Turning the reins of power over to uneducated workers led to a system of imprisonment that taught us all a lesson. So I don’t hold much respect for worker-controlled societies. As in Russia, uneducated workers soon give way to right wing militarists, always waiting in the wings.
There’s really no escape from rule from above – there is only the ability to offset some of the ill effects with progressive policies instituted by force of public will and through government – progressive taxation, universal health care and education, and breakup of monopolies, to name a few. In those societies where such policies have succeeded, people are happier, and even though it sticks in the craw of the right wing, their high rates of taxation have not diminished their individual liberties.
So I am not a Marxist in the sense that I think good governance comes from the uneducated masses. But I do believe in one of the prime precepts of Marx – that wealth is created by labor, that capital is derived from that wealth, and that labor and capital together create new wealth in exponential progression. But I am a Marxist in this sense – Marx very accurately described what we call “capitalism” – the absence of restraints on accumulation. He was just wont to come up with a viable alternative. His solution, communism, was a profound human tragedy on the scale of World War II, maybe even equaling the ill effects of European colonization.
But we have indeed come up with a viable alternative: let the marvelous engine do its thing, but regulate it. Tax the accumulators at high rates to prevent them from gaining too much power. (Accumulators invariably think that they are the producers of wealth, and want us to cede power to them on that premise. This is the essence of Rand.) Equalize some of the benefits by offering health care and education to everyone, to give everyone a firm footing on which to do their life’s work.
The end result, if the post below is any indication, is that we can have what Marx wanted – freedom from want. But to achieve our goals, we need to keep the accumulators (and the politicians and economists and philosophers in their service) at bay. In the U.S., we’re not doing a very good job. We are #23 on the list in the post below – not a bad showing, as we do have a social safety net here.
But our social safety net is under persevering attack, and has been since 1980. As a result, I would guess that our direction on that list is downward, and further that we once sat much higher on the list. Perhaps we were number one.
Piece of Mindful 