The Problem of Prosperity

"In western society, the system has managed to drag the masses so deeply into their own crap that they seem to have lost any feeling of their position as exploited and oppressed, so that they dream of nothing more than a car, a holiday, and a toweled bathroom."- Ulrike Meinhof

I have started to do my part to spread the prophetic, revolutionary word of the Lord against the rich and powerful by the only means thus far that are at my disposal-Youtube and blog comments. Yes I know, rather pathetic..but it's a beginning, no ?

As I debate a motley crowd of libertarians, paleo-conservatives, and the odd Keynesian, the major stumbling block that comes up,as can be expected is the nature of wage labor. It is difficult to argue effectively what is to me the obvious Marxist analysis, that capitalist profit by the appropriation of the unpaid labor time of the worker, when that relationship has been so naturalized by it's long establishment as feature of the economic status quo. People have forgotten there even existed a world that pre-dates the wage labor. And the fact that this system has brought obvious increases in lifestyle, at least among the labor aristocracy of the First World (to use prehaps crudely the Leninist term for the phenomena). As long as we can play with our computers, cars, and i phones on borrowed money, we do not give a damm that we are robbed of any real economic and political power. "Our mastas, they soo good to us, we don't ever wannna to run away"....this is the behavior of slaves not free people, despite all the zombie talk of "liberty" and "free choice" these blind captives repeat over and over again....One feels nostalgic for men like Rousseau, and the 18th century in general, when liberty was a battle cry against the society of commerce, when it retained serve, classical spirit of disdain for servitude to luxury consumption. But then again, that was an era of actual revolutions as well....often I fell that we are like dwarfish descended of giants, who laugh and play and often smile to recall that are fathers were so serious.

Holy War and Revolution

Hello, people of the world, comrades, fellow believers...

Theatrical openings aside I am announcing the opening of a blog dedicated,first, to the topic of Catholicism and it's relationship to Marxism, and second, to the life and times of being holding to the paradoxical position of being a Marxist and a Catholic here, in the United States, seat of the Beast. In practice, probably more the latter, given the constraints of my studies prevent me from detailing the niecites of theology and dialectical materialism. Well see how the process goes.

To start things up, however, here is a pointed quote from the Analysis of the Doctrine of Babeuf, a propaganda piece printed by the ultra-radical Concipracy of Equals, who sought in the closing phases of the French Revolution to turn the course of bourgiose reaction.

"Is it not to be feared that, not being paid any more than other jobs, they vanish to the detriment of society? Sophism! It is to the love of glory, and not the love of riches that are owed for all time the efforts of genius. Millions of poor soldiers go to their deaths for the honor of serving the whims of a cruel master. How can we doubt of the powerful effect that happiness, love of equality and the fatherland, and the workings of a wise political system can have on the human heart?"

A powerful put down of all Machiavellian/Hobbesian "realists" !