Let us continue with Marx's exposition on the subject; "Political economy, this science of wealth, is therefore simultaneously the science of renunciation, of want, of saving and it actually reaches the point where it spares man the need of either fresh air or physical exercise. This science of marvelous industry is simultaneously the science of asceticism, and its true ideal is the ascetic but extortionate miser and the ascetic but productive slave. Its moral ideal is the worker who takes part of his wages to the savings-bank, and it has even found ready-made a servile art which embodies this pet idea: it has been presented, bathed in sentimentality, on the stage.
How often do we see variations of the Horatio Alger story, the person who starts with nothing and makes himself a success, presented to us in the movies, television, magazines and popular literature. There are self-help books extolling the virtues of those who have accomplished this very feat. There is even a system of so-called philosophy, Ayn Rand's Objectivism, whose basis is that those with talent will get ahead, regardless of any obstacles, simply because of their superior ability. I would argue that most of these individuals get ahead because they are amoral "like the philosophy's founder "without any compunction concerning the human cost of getting ahead. We have seen the effects of sociopaths on our society over the last thirty years, I do not believe it is a path that we should either exalt or repeat. The followers of Ayn Rand forget that, as Colin Greer put it, she was a writer of fiction ( "Right-Wingers Believe Ayn Rand's Every Word, But They Forget She Wrote Fiction, AlterNet.org, October 10, 2009). Her philosophy has no rigor, no substantial objective economic or social examination of society, and no moral basis other than "do what you damn well please, just like Aleister Crowley, but without the honesty. She is a philosopher for the lazy and those who like simplistic answers, who are seeking justification for their narcissism and selfishness, rather than philosophy's true purpose: discovering the deeper meaning of ourselves.
Marx finishes his description of political economy, or as I call it, anti-social capitalism; "Thus political economy "despite its worldly and voluptuous appearance "is a true moral science, the most moral of all the sciences. Self-renunciation, the renunciation of life and of all human needs, is its principal thesis. The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save "the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour "your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being. Everything which the political economist takes from you in life and in humanity, he replaces for you in money and in wealth; and all the things which you cannot do, your money can do. It can eat and, drink, go to the dance hall and the theatre; it can travel, it can appropriate art, learning, the treasures of the past, political power "all this it can appropriate for you "it can buy all this: it is true endowment. Yet being all this, it wants to do nothing but create itself, buy itself; for everything else is after all its servant, and when I have the master I have the servant and do not need his servant. All passions and all activity must therefore be submerged in avarice. The worker may only have enough for him to want to live, and may only want to live in order to have that.
So what Marx calls political economy, and what I have named anti-social capitalism, bases its success on its participants' willingly giving up their humanity for the acquisition of wealth. The secret to success is to become a sociopath, a person lacking human feelings and needs other than the material aggrandizement of oneself. Compassion has no place in the life of this person, or pity, or mercy, or justice or love. They are perfect examples of applied social Darwinism, and piss poor examples of human beings.
There are a lot of people out there who "because they are unwilling or unable to shake a lifetime of indoctrination that Karl Marx and anything that he wrote is an evil lie "believe that Marx is not worth our time or our effort to study. In other words, the individuals who have probably already decided that I am some brand of "commie pinko who has no idea what it is I am talking about "and this fact is proven by my quoting Marx "and are ready to ignore this article.
Well, I recently discovered that I am joined by eminently good company in my use of Karl Marx to point out the failings of our current form of a capitalist economic system. Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan "as well as a one time assistant editor of The Wall Street Journal " is speaking of the foresight of not only Karl Marx, but V.I. Lenin, with regards to our current problems.
Mr. Roberts, in his article "Marx and Lenin Revisited (OpEdNews.com, October 6, 2009), opens with the following statements:
"If Karl Marx and V. I. Lenin were alive today, they would be leading contenders for the Nobel Prize in economics.
"Marx predicted the growing misery of working people, and Lenin foresaw the subordination of the production of goods to financial capital's accumulation of profits based on the purchase and sale of paper instruments. Their predictions are far superior to the "risk models for which the Nobel Prize has been given and are closer to the money than the predictions of Federal Reserve chairmen, US Treasury secretaries, and Nobel economists, such as Paul Krugman, who believe that more credit and more debt are the solution to the economic crisis.
In the words of the late Howard Cosell, that is telling it like it is.
Before going further into the discussion of Social Capitalism, I think a very short discussion of how I arrived at the terms Social Capitalism and anti-social capitalism is vital before we go further.
I came up with the term "anti-social capitalism first.
I have made it no secret that I suffer from either Type II or Type III bipolar disorder. I was misdiagnosed for a number of years as suffering from unipolar depression, which is not unusual for these versions of the disease: it is difficult to differentiate hypomanic or cyclothymic episodes from times when things are just going well with your life. It required several years of weekly group therapy before my counselor and I realized what the real problem was with me. (He probably realized it long before I did, and it took him time to coach me into diagnosing myself.)
In my struggles with my illness, I have come to realize that in every form of mental illness there is always one consistent component present: selfishness.
Whether you are in the depths of depression or the unbounded heights of a manic episode, it is all about you, and your pain or elation. If you are paranoid, they are out to get you. If you are schizophrenic, the voices in your head are talking only to you; the visions that you are seeing are only for you. Narcissism is about loving you to the exclusion of all others. Being a sociopath is about what you need, and to hell with everyone else. All of the forms of true sexual deviance are about you getting your jollies, not about sharing life's most intimate experience.
You get the idea.
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