"(2) By counting the most meagre form of life (existence) as the standard, indeed, as the general standard--general because it is applicable to the mass of men. He [the capitalist] turns the worker into an insensible being lacking all needs, just as he changes his activity into a pure abstraction from all activity. To him, therefore, every luxury of the worker seems to be reprehensible, and everything that goes beyond the most abstract need--be it in the realm of passive enjoyment, or a manifestation of activity--seems to him a luxury. [The economics of laissez-faire capitalism], 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 marvellous 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. Thus [the economics of laissez-faire capitalism]--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." [Emphasis added.]
The ultimate goal of the fearmongers and other liars who strive with such intense fanaticism to force their workers to become powerless "wage slaves," is to make people believe that their social Darwinist form of capitalism is the only option. Too often over the last seventy years, these individuals have used the threat du jour to trick Americans into giving up some part of our freedom, especially in the sphere of economics. They desire to reduce our middle class, once the envy of the World, to penury and mute acceptance of the abrogation of their rights, both politically and economically.
President Eisenhower gave these monsters a name, "the Military-Industrial Complex," in an address to the nation just before he left office. President Kennedy wanted to break the Military-Industrial Complex into "a thousand pieces," starting with its most obvious and obnoxious piece, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). JFK was killed--probably by members of that shadow government--before he could achieve his goal, and every President since has lived in fear he might be next unless he toes the line. The Military-Industrial Complex fears, and wishes to eliminate, a large, knowledgeable middle class. That middle class has foiled the fearmongers' plans twice in recent memory: the War in Vietnam, and forcing Richard Nixon to resign as President of the United States.
Alexander Hamilton in The Federalist Papers No. 8, warned us of the potential for such an occurrence, the rise of an aristocracy on the back of the nation, and its outcome:
"The perpetual menacings of danger oblige the government to be always prepared to repel it; its armies must be numerous enough for instant defense. The continual necessity for their services enhances the importance of the soldier, and proportionably degrades the condition of the citizen. The military state becomes elevated above the civil. The inhabitants of territories, often the theatre of war, are unavoidably subjected to frequent infringements on their rights, which serve to weaken their sense of those rights; and by degrees the people are brought to consider the soldiery not only as their protectors, but as their superiors. The transition from this disposition to that of considering them masters, is neither remote nor difficult; but it is very difficult to prevail upon a people under such impressions, to make a bold or effectual resistance to usurpations supported by the military power." --The Federalist Papers, No. 8.
We must oppose the efforts of this would-be aristocracy to make our nation, it's Constitution, and its laws as outdated as hoop skirts and bustles. The plutocrats have the advantage of long-term planning, money, and too many Americans' ignorance of the Military-Industrial Complex's real purpose and intentions. All we have are numbers, determination, and love of this country and its traditions. Ir is enough for us to win, if we do not hesitate to oppose those who would trample our rights in the name of self-aggrandizement, now.
"Five to one, baby, One in five,
No one here gets out alive;
...They've got the guns,
but we've got the numbers;
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