Why We’re Marxists

[TBF]

Marxism lives because we have not gone beyond the circumstances that created it.

Months after its release, Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is still getting praised in reviews and sitting near the top of bestseller charts. If the invisibility of a system is a marker of its ideological success, this can’t be a good sign for capitalism.

It’s no surprise that people are curious about the causes of the injustice that surrounds them. Average workers’ wages in the US have fallen sizably from 2007 to 2012; in the same period, over 90 percent of all new income went to the top 1 percent; while around 46 million Americans live in poverty, the gap between corporate profits and workers’ wages has never been greater. Piketty’s conclusion that capitalism, if left unchecked, generates a concentration of wealth among a tiny minority sits well with this lived experience.

Merit or hard work, the standard justifcation for inequality, has little to do with our new gilded age ...

Much more here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/07/why-were-marxists/

[Starry Messenger]

1. I just commented on their FB thread too.

I want that Lego figure! lol

Frankly, I don't know where I'd be mentally right now if I hadn't started reading Marx. Things are still terrible, but at least you can see why and work on stuff.

I worry about people who are facing the despair without knowing what is happening to them.

[TBF]

2. Dumbledore lego rocks -

we love the Hobbit sets!

[Starry Messenger]

3. Oo, good tip!

I see a craft project in my future.

[Jackpine Radical]

4. The problem is that so many of those experiencing helpless rage & despair

are permitting their exploiters to focus the blame on those forces that contain their only hope for escape from their miserable fates.

I find little consolation in collective blame. It was not the fault of the electorate that the Teabaggers staged a revolution at the polls in 2010--it was instead the fault of the combination of processes that failed to deliver the promised change. It is not the fault of those whose minds are twisted by the likes of Beck & Limbaugh; it is the fault of a corrupted society that allows its channels of communication to be polluted with poisonous messages.

Collective blame is something like blaming the victim. Sometimes, in fact, it amounts to the same thing. The effects are similar, in that it leads one to focus corrective efforts in the wrong place, or at least in the wrong form.

It does no good to rail against the stupidity of the deluded masses. We, those of us who for whatever reason have a somewhat clearer grasp of the state of the world, need to somehow awaken our fellows to those realities that we so painfully perceive, and--above all--to infuse them with a sense of personal efficacy, to grow within them the belief that their actions can result in meaningful change.

We need to assess the tools at our disposal. The Internet and our growing understanding of how leaderless organizations function, will, I think, prove crucial. We need to look carefully at the new findings of social psychology and related disciplines on how to structure the social environment to "prime" people into a prosocial orientation.

If there is one thing that distinguishes the radical Left from the generic Right, I believe it is a psychological predisposition that encompasses a willingness to contemplate change, a taste for new ideas and solutions, and a rejection of traditional authority. I further believe that it is only through (pardon the term) capitalizing on these traits that we can effect a transition into a new and more humane world that serves the needs of everyone while preserving the biosphere.

[Starry Messenger]

5. I definitely don't blame anyone.

The distortion field of BS in this country is thick.

"to grow within them the belief that their actions can result in meaningful change."--this is the work I am engaged in. It's tough and sometimes you have to start small, but the power of making even small changes is very strong.

[Jackpine Radical]

6. I certainly didn't have you in mind when I wrote that.

I was actually thinking of all those who blamed 2010 on the electorate rather than on the Democrats' initial raising of expectations in 2008 and then allowing those expectations to crash in 2010. Regardless of why the Dems failed to deliver (or at least to contextualize their failures), they did disappoint a lot of people, and paid the price. They left the lasting impression that they make good promises, but don't make good ON promises. Since I see the Dems as largely owned by baleful private interests, I see these failures as just another revelation of how the system works rather than as either a naive failure by Obama or a loss of nerve by the voters.

[yallerdawg]

8. And if this doesn't work...

then we eat them?

[TBF]

9. GMTA ...

I was just thinking "can we start tearing all this down yet"

[Jackpine Radical]

10. No.

Too many toxins in their body fat.

[socialist_n_TN]

7. That's a very good point Starry. I agree....

If you don't have a framework which somewhat explains the things we're all experiencing then I think that anyone could be lured into explanations that are divisive and just plain blame the wrong people for what's going on.