Varoufakis, with typical stupidity, asserts the opposite.
Not that Marx was incapable of penning a spank mag. Still, by the time Varoufakis could read it, the Communist Manifesto was a hundred and thirty years old. Communism itself was not 'dazzlingly new' but stupid, senile, shite as represented by the brain addled and deeply provincial regime in neighboring Albania.
This is not the case today. Obama has come and gone. No 'exciting changes' are in the offing for any save die-hard Trumpistas or deluded Brexiteers.
A manifesto should represent an 'unthought known'- something we'd often felt or heard in an incoherent or fragmentary fashion but which, we feel, has now found its canonical, action guiding, expression.
By then, Marx had shaken off his Left Hegelian sehnsucht and was a genuine Ricardian with a Classical Labour theory of Value. Similarly, Engels was a genuine Fox hunting Manchester 'Radical'. He understood his trade. It was these bourgeois qualities which gave Marx and Engels a certain cachet, more particularly after the rise of Bismark's Germany and the humiliation of France.
Germany's success in new knowledge based industries and its repudiation of Free Trade is what made Marxism attractive. Had Germany declined in economic and military power, Marx would have had a diminishing currency. After all, it was only when Bengal was still a source of fabulous wealth, Raja Ramohan Roy's writings could inspire Unitarians in America and even England.
Why would any one from Ireland or Spain or France or Germany want to listen to Varoufakis who fucked up the Greek economy? Greece is doing very badly- but then it was always behind Western Europe. Ireland and Spain are recovering- the latter has overtaken Italy- and Britain, of course, is out of the Union.
Still, in Varoufakis's vain little mind, he has been commissioned by the advanced countries who want to imitate a backward country which regressed under an idiot of a Finance Minister.
1848 was 'the year History reached a turning point and failed to turn'. Nationalism was the Spectre haunting Europe- Irish Nationalism for England, Napoleonic idiocy for France, Prussianism for Germany, Polish Nationalism for the Tzar, Hungarian Nationalism for the Hapsburgs, and the various types of Balkan Nationalism for the Grand Turk.
The question was whether the Nationalist project would be realised by Liberals or Monarchists- the likes of Mazzini and Kossuth or Bismark and Cavour.
Henry George, not Marx, was the prophet of Globalisation's discontents. Rents, not Profits, were maldistributed because of localised hysteresis effects, not the logic of the Market.
But, in the early Seventies, my memory is, they were saying 'Coca Cola will topple Third World democrats- as they toppled Allende- so as to enforce 'neo-colonialism'. Thus in India, we were forced to drink 'Campa Cola' coz otherwise some little shit with a Wharton degree, running the local bottling plant, would go and murder Madam Gandhi.
Multinationals wanted to penetrate each and every Developing country. Some let them do so- and, provided they didn't breed like bunnies, prospered. Others didn't and stayed shit.
Foreign capital may be afraid of expropriation and thus fail to 'develop' a given market. But that isn't its fault. Domestic capital too will be in flight from that market. Investment will occur only if its costs can be recovered and a profit can be made.
Thus Marx's stupidity- the idiocy of his second hand Economics- caused his prediction to be falsified. True, he'd said Capitalism would rise till Communism supplanted it. But he did not say Communism would be so stupid that its votaries would abandon it so Capitalism could rise again.
Henry George, not Marx, is the true heir to Ricardo. Indeed, Communism was a subterfuge because everybody already had Rational Expectations of 'Ricardian Equivalence'. It's like people who support the regime in Venezuela or Mugabe-land. They pretend its about the reality of workers owning the means of production when actually its a cheesy game-show like 'Touch the Truck' with Dale Winton.
Wikipedia says-
So what? The Nizam of Hyderabad- or, according to Amartya Sen, the Bengali factory worker- were even more callous.
No doubt, this was the argument the Visigoths directed at Roman Civilization. But there were, and always will be, tribes poorer yet.
Since we all know what happened next, the thing is garbage
Prevailing class conventions cease to do so once conquest becomes imminent.
It did not say 'England expects every sorcerer to do his duty' because England knew sorcery does not work. Had England relied upon sorcerers not sailors, it would have been conquered and reduced to slavery.
If people currently working under a labour contract united together and refused to work under any such thing, then they will be much worse off. Some will have to become domestic slaves simply so as to have a roof over their heads and some left-overs to eat.
Stalin flourished after the West stopped backing White Generals fighting the Bolsheviks. Trotsky was a figure of fear. Churchill showered abuse upon him. Stalin, by contrast, was the beloved 'Uncle Joe' of the War time Newsreels- one of the Big Three, along with Churchill and Roosevelt.
Similarly, a Vegan might say 'You are what you eat' and a Freudian might say 'you are what you fuck' and a cat-lover might say 'Miaow, miaow, miaow'.
Varoufakis has helped condemn whole generations of Greeks to deprivation, a decrepit environment etc. But it was in the name of Marx, not Hayek, that this was done.
Managers, not Capitalists, may face increased stress- but that's a different story.
A sensible man might say 'China is using Capital- its money power- to undermine the Democratic West. It is happening in Greece as we speak.
Suppose a big steam roller is coming towards us. Should we all get together and push it back? Nope. That way we all die. We should run around the side and climb up into the cockpit so as to turn off its engine or steer it away from its destructive path.
Schauble might still have stuck to his guns, but Draghi and the French would have got something to work with. Essentially, the moment a purely legal argument is made then all the Finance Ministers have to go back to their countries and get their Civil Servants to pore over the details.
Everybody expected Varoufakis to blind his Eurozone colleagues with science. Furthermore a legal challenge to Austerity, on the basis of 'price stability' could have been mounted. Grown ups could have thrashed the matter out and disintermediated journalists writing about lazy Greeks or Nazi Germans.
Instead, what happened? Varoufakis stuck his hands down the back of his pants and pulled out something he called chocolate cake. His remedy for Austerity was to invite everybody to eat his stinky chocolate cake. The Eurozone ministers shunned him. They wouldn't accept his company at dinner.
Varoufakis now says he ought to have involved the proletariat. What does this mean? Presumably, he should have appealed to the Hotel staff to go on strike to force the Eurozone ministers to share Varofakis's chocolate cake.
For a manifesto to succeed, it must speak to our hearts like a poem while infecting the mind with images and ideas that are dazzlingly new.A manifesto must have a conceptual tie to action in order to advance its concrete objectives. If it dazzles, it blinds and defeats its own kairotic moment. A poem is a very different thing. At its most consummate, it becomes not merely a substitute, or 'dangerous supplement', for what it yearns for, but, rather, a superior end in itself. Rousseau and Ruskin still wanked in order to fuck. Both might write manifestos- but Modernism took itself in hand not to assail Mammon but to outdo Onan.
Not that Marx was incapable of penning a spank mag. Still, by the time Varoufakis could read it, the Communist Manifesto was a hundred and thirty years old. Communism itself was not 'dazzlingly new' but stupid, senile, shite as represented by the brain addled and deeply provincial regime in neighboring Albania.
It needs to open our eyes to the true causes of the bewildering, disturbing, exciting changes occurring around us, exposing the possibilities with which our current reality is pregnant.In 1848 and 1968, it was possible for some young people to believe that some profound convulsion of a global sort was occurring.
This is not the case today. Obama has come and gone. No 'exciting changes' are in the offing for any save die-hard Trumpistas or deluded Brexiteers.
It should make us feel hopelessly inadequate for not having recognised these truths ourselves, and it must lift the curtain on the unsettling realisation that we have been acting as petty accomplices, reproducing a dead-end past. Lastly, it needs to have the power of a Beethoven symphony, urging us to become agents of a future that ends unnecessary mass suffering and to inspire humanity to realise its potential for authentic freedom.Beethoven's symphonies had the power of a Beethoven symphony. They did't urge anybody to do anything to end unnecessary mass suffering. That's why the Nazis paired him with Wagner.
A manifesto should represent an 'unthought known'- something we'd often felt or heard in an incoherent or fragmentary fashion but which, we feel, has now found its canonical, action guiding, expression.
No manifesto has better succeeded in doing all this than the one published in February 1848 at 46 Liverpool Street, London.Really? Communism has inspired humanity to realise it potential for authentic freedom? That's what happened?
Commissioned by English revolutionaries, The Communist Manifesto (or the Manifesto of the Communist Party, as it was first published) was authored by two young Germans – Karl Marx, a 29-year-old philosopher with a taste for epicurean hedonism and Hegelian rationality, and Friedrich Engels, a 28-year-old heir to a Manchester mill.Why is Varoufakis telling us such a stupid lie? English revolutionaries did not commission the Manifesto. The thing was wholly German. England was far more developed than Germany or even France. The English had even less respect for Europe than they do now. Only Julian Harney, among the Chartists, gave Marx and Engels the time of day- but Marx's writing style proved not to be to the taste of the English. Harney himself emigrated to America. Marx did get some journalistic work from the American Herald Tribune and not simply because of his contempt for Mexicans whom he described as the 'last of men'. But, Marx was not a good writer- as the Anglo-Saxons judge such things. Still, he had a Doctorate and write a ponderous tome in a pedantic manner which claimed to prove, by some algebraic method, an entire theory of History.
By then, Marx had shaken off his Left Hegelian sehnsucht and was a genuine Ricardian with a Classical Labour theory of Value. Similarly, Engels was a genuine Fox hunting Manchester 'Radical'. He understood his trade. It was these bourgeois qualities which gave Marx and Engels a certain cachet, more particularly after the rise of Bismark's Germany and the humiliation of France.
Germany's success in new knowledge based industries and its repudiation of Free Trade is what made Marxism attractive. Had Germany declined in economic and military power, Marx would have had a diminishing currency. After all, it was only when Bengal was still a source of fabulous wealth, Raja Ramohan Roy's writings could inspire Unitarians in America and even England.
Why would any one from Ireland or Spain or France or Germany want to listen to Varoufakis who fucked up the Greek economy? Greece is doing very badly- but then it was always behind Western Europe. Ireland and Spain are recovering- the latter has overtaken Italy- and Britain, of course, is out of the Union.
Still, in Varoufakis's vain little mind, he has been commissioned by the advanced countries who want to imitate a backward country which regressed under an idiot of a Finance Minister.
As a work of political literature, the manifesto remains unsurpassed.A manifesto is supposed to have an immediate impact. It has a 'kairotic' aspect. It is 'timely'. Marx's manifesto had none. It was translated into English in 1850 but it wasn't till the 1880's that one can speak of an English Marxism with some political significance. But this had to do with the extension of the franchise and a decline in Britain's relative industrial position..
Its most infamous lines, including the opening one (“A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism”), have a Shakespearean quality. Like Hamlet confronted by the ghost of his slain father, the reader is compelled to wonder: “Should I conform to the prevailing order, suffering the slings and arrows of the outrageous fortune bestowed upon me by history’s irresistible forces? Or should I join these forces, taking up arms against the status quo and, by opposing it, usher in a brave new world?”Is Varoufakis capable of writing a single sentence not fatal to his own cause? Hamlet screwed up right royally. Every reader knows this.
For Marx and Engels’ immediate readership, this was not an academic dilemma, debated in the salons of Europe.Their immediate readership was tiny and wholly German. European salons, then as now, didn't debate 'academic dilemmas'. Impecunious pedagogues did.
1848 was 'the year History reached a turning point and failed to turn'. Nationalism was the Spectre haunting Europe- Irish Nationalism for England, Napoleonic idiocy for France, Prussianism for Germany, Polish Nationalism for the Tzar, Hungarian Nationalism for the Hapsburgs, and the various types of Balkan Nationalism for the Grand Turk.
The question was whether the Nationalist project would be realised by Liberals or Monarchists- the likes of Mazzini and Kossuth or Bismark and Cavour.
Their manifesto was a call to action, and heeding this spectre’s invocation often meant persecution, or, in some cases, lengthy imprisonment.Today, a similar dilemma faces young people: conform to an established order that is crumbling and incapable of reproducing itself, or oppose it, at considerable personal cost, in search of new ways of working, playing and living together? Even though communist parties have disappeared almost entirely from the political scene, the spirit of communism driving the manifesto is proving hard to silence.WTF? Sclerotic Communist parties exist as do corrupt ex-Communist parties. Silence on their part would be strategic. It is when they talk that they repel young people.
To see beyond the horizon is any manifesto’s ambition. But to succeed as Marx and Engels did in accurately describing an era that would arrive a century-and-a-half in the future, as well as to analyse the contradictions and choices we face today, is truly astounding. In the late 1840s, capitalism was foundering, local, fragmented and timid.Which is why Britian had turned into the greatest Empire the world had ever seen while France would prove, under Napoleon's nephew, to have become a paper tiger.
And yet Marx and Engels took one long look at it and foresaw our globalised, financialised, iron-clad, all-singing-all-dancing capitalism. This was the creature that came into being after 1991, at the very same moment the establishment was proclaiming the death of Marxism and the end of history.Wow! Marx did not predict the end of Capitalism but its triumph! Thus, when Communism fell, this confirmed Marx as a true prophet! Can Varoufakis hear himself?
Henry George, not Marx, was the prophet of Globalisation's discontents. Rents, not Profits, were maldistributed because of localised hysteresis effects, not the logic of the Market.
Of course, the predictive failure of The Communist Manifesto has long been exaggerated. I remember how even leftwing economists in the early 1970s challenged the pivotal manifesto prediction that capital would “nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere”.Capitalism had done that by 1914. China and Abyssinia were playing ball. Even Tibet had been penetrated. Incidentally, Communist regimes proved very bourgeois customers for MNCs. Soviet Union had been helped to electrify by G.E. Why? They paid their bills.
Drawing upon the sad reality of what were then called third world countries, they argued that capital had lost its fizz well before expanding beyond its “metropolis” in Europe, America and Japan.Left wing economists say stupid things- because (a) they are economists and (b) they think an ostrich with its head in the sand can have a Left, or Right, or up my Tail, wing which aint entirely Ornamental.
But, in the early Seventies, my memory is, they were saying 'Coca Cola will topple Third World democrats- as they toppled Allende- so as to enforce 'neo-colonialism'. Thus in India, we were forced to drink 'Campa Cola' coz otherwise some little shit with a Wharton degree, running the local bottling plant, would go and murder Madam Gandhi.
Empirically they were correct: European, US and Japanese multinational corporations operating in the “peripheries” of Africa, Asia and Latin America were confining themselves to the role of colonial resource extractors and failing to spread capitalism there.Coca Cola sells Coca Cola. That's how it makes its money. No doubt mining sector MNCs extract raw materials but MNCs come in all flavour. Take Pepsi Cola. It hired Nixon after he lost to Kennedy to go around the globe getting poor countries to grant industrial licenses for the production of this particular brand of soft drink.
Multinationals wanted to penetrate each and every Developing country. Some let them do so- and, provided they didn't breed like bunnies, prospered. Others didn't and stayed shit.
Instead of imbuing these countries with capitalist development (drawing “all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation”), they argued that foreign capital was reproducing the development of underdevelopment in the third world.What does 'the development of underdevelopment' mean? Consider a desert island. It is underdeveloped because no one lives there. This underdevelopment does not have to be 'developed' by anybody or any thing. It already exists.
Foreign capital may be afraid of expropriation and thus fail to 'develop' a given market. But that isn't its fault. Domestic capital too will be in flight from that market. Investment will occur only if its costs can be recovered and a profit can be made.
It was as if the manifesto had placed too much faith in capital’s ability to spread into every nook and cranny. Most economists, including those sympathetic to Marx, doubted the manifesto’s prediction that “exploitation of the world-market” would give “a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country”.It would have been perfectly reasonable to think that Third World countries would favour autarkic policies so as to increase the power of the regime. Moreover, MNCs had in fact persuaded National Intelligence Agencies to interfere in certain developing countries, so some Economists may well have believed that a political factor would militate against an economic process.
As it turned out, the manifesto was right, albeit belatedly. It would take the collapse of the Soviet Union and the insertion of two billion Chinese and Indian workers into the capitalist labour market for its prediction to be vindicated.China and India abandoned Marxist Economic policies because they were so stupid even the stupidest voter suspected that something entirely corrupt and 'casteist' was going on behind the smokescreen they provided.
Thus Marx's stupidity- the idiocy of his second hand Economics- caused his prediction to be falsified. True, he'd said Capitalism would rise till Communism supplanted it. But he did not say Communism would be so stupid that its votaries would abandon it so Capitalism could rise again.
Indeed, for capital to globalise fully, the regimes that pledged allegiance to the manifesto had first to be torn asunder. Has history ever procured a more delicious irony?Was the Chinese Communist Party 'torn asunder'? Nope. Nor was the Indian Left. Gorbachev, it is true, was so stupid as to surrender control of the Economy but though the Party died, the nomenklatura survived.
Anyone reading the manifesto today will be surprised to discover a picture of a world much like our own, teetering fearfully on the edge of technological innovation. In the manifesto’s time, it was the steam engine that posed the greatest challenge to the rhythms and routines of feudal life. The peasantry were swept into the cogs and wheels of this machinery and a new class of masters, the factory owners and the merchants, usurped the landed gentry’s control over society. Now, it is artificial intelligence and automation that loom as disruptive threats, promising to sweep away “all fixed, fast-frozen relations”.The steam engine was a good thing. It freed peasants from the tyranny of feudal lords. Varoufakis is saying something similar is happening now. So, young people should welcome it. The gig economy will end the tyranny of feather bedded employment which has so enfeebled and unjustly enriched my generation.
“Constantly revolutionising … instruments of production,” the manifesto proclaims, transform “the whole relations of society”, bringing about “constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation”.Absolutely! Soon there will be an app for couch surfing and another for blood and sperm and egg donation. There is no need for a Welfare state which will provide a social minimum in terms of housing and education and so on- nor of a 'paternalistic' employer- who will pay for vacations and paternity leave and pensions and so on.
For Marx and Engels, however, this disruption is to be celebrated. It acts as a catalyst for the final push humanity needs to do away with our remaining prejudices that underpin the great divide between those who own the machines and those who design, operate and work with them. “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned,” they write in the manifesto of technology’s effect, “and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind”. By ruthlessly vaporising our preconceptions and false certainties, technological change is forcing us, kicking and screaming, to face up to how pathetic our relations with one another are.Yup! The Bank of Mum & Dad will be securitized and sold off. When you try to hit up Granny for a loan, or a place to crash while recovering from exhaustion, you will be put through to a call centre in Uganda. Turns out Granny's interest in you now belongs to a Guatemalan syndicate. Thus you have to go kiss x number of old ladies suffering from dementia so as to get a mug of ovaltine and some biscuits and a smelly old sofa on which you can snatch some much needed sleep.
We see trillions of words, in print and online, used to debate Meghan Markle. Before that it was Pippa Middleton's bum. No body cares about globalisation. It is immigration they object to.
Today, we see this reckoning in millions of words, in print and online, used to debate globalisation’s discontents.
While celebrating how globalisation has shifted billions from abject poverty to relative poverty, venerable western newspapers, Hollywood personalities, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, bishops and even multibillionaire financiers all lament some of its less desirable ramifications: unbearable inequality, brazen greed, climate change, and the hijacking of our parliamentary democracies by bankers and the ultra-rich.All of which would have happened anyway.
None of this should surprise a reader of the manifesto. “Society as a whole,” it argues, “is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other.”This wasn't true in 1848 and it isn't true now.
As production is mechanised, and the profit margin of the machine-owners becomes our civilisation’s driving motive, society splits between non-working shareholders and non-owner wage-workers. As for the middle class, it is the dinosaur in the room, set for extinction.Machine-owners don't matter. Realty does. Landlords vs Tenants is a possible syzygy. Machine owners aren't important because Manufacturing isn't important and, in any case, it is only in the Service Sector that increasing labour input by 'precariat' type contracting can yield 'surplus value'. It is true, the composition of the middle class is changing such that land-lords and some retired people have increased salience- but that would have happened anyway because of local, not global, rent-seeking behaviour causing irrational distortions.
Henry George, not Marx, is the true heir to Ricardo. Indeed, Communism was a subterfuge because everybody already had Rational Expectations of 'Ricardian Equivalence'. It's like people who support the regime in Venezuela or Mugabe-land. They pretend its about the reality of workers owning the means of production when actually its a cheesy game-show like 'Touch the Truck' with Dale Winton.
Wikipedia says-
Jerry Middleton, 39, from Winchester, Hampshire, was the winner who managed to stay awake touching the vehicle for 81 hours 43 minutes and 31 seconds. He stated that he was going to sell the vehicle to fund a new political party.[2] Middleton stood at the 2001 General Election in the Kingston and Surbiton constituency, but gained only 54 votes of a turnout of 49,093.[3]Was the guy a fucking Nazi to get so few votes? No. He was an 'Eco Warrior'. A truck was the last thing he ought to have been touching. Fuck, if he'd come out- in a suitably coded way- against dark skinned Iyengars moving in and stinking up the place with their sambars- I'd have campaigned for him. Iyengars must be confined to Zone 1 or 2 so I can drop in on them claiming to be a distant relative and nosh down on some proper 'thaligai'.
At the same time, the ultra-rich become guilt-ridden and stressed as they watch everyone else’s lives sink into the precariousness of insecure wage-slavery.The ultra-rich may pretend, from time to time, to be concerned about poor people. But, nobody is fooled. Thus has it always been.
Marx and Engels foresaw that this supremely powerful minority would eventually prove “unfit to rule” over such polarised societies, because they would not be in a position to guarantee the wage-slaves a reliable existence.Stalin and Mao showed that you can starve millions of people while increasing the power of a tiny ruling elite. You can reintroduce a type of slavery worse than anything in previous history in your Gulags. Indeed, the slave labour which perished building the White Sea Canal felt better off than in the Gulag.
So what? The Nizam of Hyderabad- or, according to Amartya Sen, the Bengali factory worker- were even more callous.
Barricaded in their gated communities, they find themselves consumed by anxiety and incapable of enjoying their riches.Really? Where? Maybe Venezuela. Not London, not New York where a dodgy Property Developer has become President.
Some of them, those smart enough to realise their true long-term self-interest, recognise the welfare state as the best available insurance policy. But alas, explains the manifesto, as a social class, it will be in their nature to skimp on the insurance premium, and they will work tirelessly to avoid paying the requisite taxes.The Welfare State is a Social Insurance scheme. If pay-outs grow too quickly, it gets scaled down. Entitlements are ruthlessly cut by the very politicians who promised to reverse any such trend. Varoufakis should know. That is what his Party has done in Greece. It turns out, the ultra-rich will never finance Social Insurance- indeed, they never have. All over the wold, working people have realised this.
Is this not what has transpired? The ultra-rich are an insecure, permanently disgruntled clique, constantly in and out of detox clinics, relentlessly seeking solace from psychics, shrinks and entrepreneurial gurus.Yup! That's what's happening to Bill Gates and Warren Buffet and Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, everyone else struggles to put food on the table, pay tuition fees, juggle one credit card for another or fight depression.Everyone else? How come so many ordinary people are paying a lot of money for IVF? If they are struggling to feed themselves, why are they so intent on adding another mouth to feed to the household?
We act as if our lives are carefree, claiming to like what we do and do what we like. Yet in reality, we cry ourselves to sleep.Okay- Varoufakis is being sarcastic. I get it now. Greeks may have cried because of what Varoufakis did but they've gotten over it.
Do-gooders, establishment politicians and recovering academic economists all respond to this predicament in the same way, issuing fiery condemnations of the symptoms (income inequality) while ignoring the causes (exploitation resulting from the unequal property rights over machines, land, resources). Is it any wonder we are at an impasse, wallowing in hopelessness that only serves the populists seeking to court the worst instincts of the masses?Populists like Syriza? But, they quickly do a volte face and screw over those who voted for them.
With the rapid rise of advanced technology, we are brought closer to the moment when we must decide how to relate to each other in a rational, civilised manner.The rational manner of relating to each other is everybody saying or hearing 'you own more than me. Boo to you! You are exploiting me! Share your wealth immediately.'
No doubt, this was the argument the Visigoths directed at Roman Civilization. But there were, and always will be, tribes poorer yet.
We can no longer hide behind the inevitability of work and the oppressive social norms it necessitates.We can hide wherever we like because nobody is looking for us. Work is inevitable. Our bums won't wipe themselves. No doubt, Varoufakis finds the social norm against protruding a turd from one's rectum to be highly oppressive. Still, it will always exist.
The manifesto gives its 21st-century reader an opportunity to see through this mess and to recognise what needs to be done so that the majority can escape from discontent into new social arrangements in which “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”.Nonsense! The Manifesto is just empty verbiage. It is not linked to any program of action. Rather, it predicts that some big revolutionary change is about to occur and it sure will be swell though what shape it will take is unclear.
Since we all know what happened next, the thing is garbage
Even though it contains no roadmap of how to get there, the manifesto remains a source of hope not to be dismissed.Because garbage is not dismissed but carefully picked out of bins and skips by compulsive hoarders who will die unmourned and unlamented when a pile of garbage collapses upon them inside the rats' warren they have rendered their own home.
If the manifesto holds the same power to excite, enthuse and shame us that it did in 1848, it is because the struggle between social classes is as old as time itself. Marx and Engels summed this up in 13 audacious words: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”People within a class compete to get out of it and onto the next rung of the ladder. Otherwise cooperation, not conflict, characterises Society.
Conflict, as the engine of history, has been represented by Wars where the subaltern mindlessly obeys the hegemon. Generally the hegemon is of higher hereditary class or else this becomes the case within a generation.
From feudal aristocracies to industrialised empires, the engine of history has always been the conflict between constantly revolutionising technologies and prevailing class conventions.
Prevailing class conventions cease to do so once conquest becomes imminent.
With each disruption of society’s technology, the conflict between us changes form.Technology does not matter. The victor can always decide not to use it.
Old classes die out and eventually only two remain standing: the class that owns everything and the class that owns nothing – the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.This has never happened and will never happen. There is no point owning stuff with a negative real rate of return. Because of 'reswitching' and information asymmetry, it will always be the case that some assets can have a positive rate of return for some members of an otherwise impoverished class but not for others from a wealthy one. Thus even if, formally, the impoverished class is forbidden to own property or enter into contracts, still the thing will happen by default. Slaves will buy their freedom and, like Trimalchio in the Satyricon, insinuate themselves by ostentation into the older patrician class.
This is the predicament in which we find ourselves today. While we owe capitalism for having reduced all class distinctions to the gulf between owners and non-owners, Marx and Engels want us to realise that capitalism is insufficiently evolved to survive the technologies it spawns.Capitalism has evolved plenty. Technology is embodied Capital and its continued evolution depends on Capitalism's ability to coordinate vaster and vaster operations each of which requires unprecedented investment. Marx and Engels were so stupid as to think that Capitalists would compete with each other so ruthlessly that profit would go to zero and so the wheels would fall off the vehicle. They were very silly.
It is our duty to tear away at the old notion of privately owned means of production and force a metamorphosis, which must involve the social ownership of machinery, land and resources.Venezuela, here we come!
Now, when new technologies are unleashed in societies bound by the primitive labour contract, wholesale misery follows.Yup! That's the story of the silicon chip. When it entered offices and factories, wholesale misery- for Trade Union bosses- soon followed. They stopped being able to hold Society to ransom.
In the manifesto’s unforgettable words: “A society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.”Nothing is like some sorcerer in a fairy tale. Marx was a big silly.
The sorcerer will always imagine that their apps, search engines, robots and genetically engineered seeds will bring wealth and happiness to all. But, once released into societies divided between wage labourers and owners, these technological marvels will push wages and prices to levels that create low profits for most businesses.Varoufakis is forgetting about 'reswitching' and information asymmetry. Some businesses will go to the wall because they use the wrong technology and pay their owners too much. Others won't. A few will rise to the top while some big conglomerates will come crashing down.
It is only big tech, big pharma and the few corporations that command exceptionally large political and economic power over us that truly benefit.In a race, only the winner gets the prize. Thus we should not allow our kids to race because most will never win the prize. The class of winners may keep changing but we should pretend it is fixed for all time and thus can become an object of hatred and envy.
If we continue to subscribe to labour contracts between employer and employee, then private property rights will govern and drive capital to inhuman ends.Yes! We must abolish labour contracts! That way, at the end of the month, when you come to me and say 'I have wiped your bum faithfully five times a day (what? I shit a lot), now pay me the million pounds you promised me'; I can reply 'go fuck yourself. Where's your contract of employment? You have been wiping my bum all these days because you are a bum wiper by inclination and character. Get back to wiping my bum immediately, you fucking pervert.'
Only by abolishing private ownership of the instruments of mass production and replacing it with a new type of common ownership that works in sync with new technologies, will we lessen inequality and find collective happiness.Quite right! Your new smartphone embodies new technologies. I must be allowed to take it from you because you don't own it. It is our common property. I can't, in foro conscientiae, stand by and allow you to hog the thing.
According to Marx and Engels’ 13-word theory of history, the current stand-off between worker and owner has always been guaranteed.I own the bum which is the means of production of shit. I employed you to wipe it for a million pounds a month. But you know I won't pay you because there is no contract and anyway I own no resources because nobody does. So there is a stand-off such that you won't wipe my bum. Boo! This is a violation of my Human Rights! You are discriminating against me in a blatant fashion! After all, you wipe your own bum. Yet, you won't come to my house and wipe my bum! Why? It iz coz I iz blek.
“Equally inevitable,” the manifesto states, is the bourgeoisie’s “fall and the victory of the proletariat”. So far, history has not fulfilled this prediction, but critics forget that the manifesto, like any worthy piece of propaganda, presents hope in the form of certainty. Just as Lord Nelson rallied his troops before the Battle of Trafalgar by announcing that England “expected” them to do their duty (even if he had grave doubts that they would), the manifesto bestows upon the proletariat the expectation that they will do their duty to themselves, inspiring them to unite and liberate one another from the bonds of wage-slavery.Nelson won. It turned out England expected every sailor to do his duty because England had correctly predicted that England would greatly prosper and enjoy increased security if its sailors did their duty.
It did not say 'England expects every sorcerer to do his duty' because England knew sorcery does not work. Had England relied upon sorcerers not sailors, it would have been conquered and reduced to slavery.
If people currently working under a labour contract united together and refused to work under any such thing, then they will be much worse off. Some will have to become domestic slaves simply so as to have a roof over their heads and some left-overs to eat.
Will they? On current form, it seems unlikely. But, then again, we had to wait for globalisation to appear in the 1990s before the manifesto’s estimation of capital’s potential could be fully vindicated.Twenty years have gone by since. During that period workers have understood the importance of labour contracts. They now know they need to read the fine print.
Might it not be that the new global, increasingly precarious proletariat needs more time before it can play the historic role the manifesto anticipated?The 'precariat' has already voted for restrictions on immigration and offshoring of jobs. But this is just 'Tiebout sorting'- i.e. subsidiarity based variation in local fiscal policy. It is a good thing- 'smart' Globalisation, so to speak which gets rid of worthless pi-jaw about 'universal' rights so as to focus instead on local, incentive compatible, 'bonds of law'- contracts- which preserve the things people find valuable about particular areas and communities.
While the jury is still out, Marx and Engels tell us that, if we fear the rhetoric of revolution, or try to distract ourselves from our duty to one another, we will find ourselves caught in a vertiginous spiral in which capital saturates and bleaches the human spirit.Very true! If we fear the rhetoric of sorcerers, or try to distract ourselves from our duty to wipe each others bums, we will find ourselves caught in a vertiginous spiral in which Sorcery saturates and bleaches the anus of our human spirit.
The only thing we can be certain of, according to the manifesto, is that unless capital is socialised we are in for dystopic developments.The only thing we can be certain of, according to the Necronomicon, is that unless the tesseract is socialised by being forced to join a kindergarten where it can learn to play nice with other tesseracts, we are in for dystopic developments featuring the rise of the Evil Dead and the Elder Gods of Chtulu.
On the topic of dystopia, the sceptical reader will perk up: what of the manifesto’s own complicity in legitimising authoritarian regimes and steeling the spirit of gulag guards? Instead of responding defensively, pointing out that no one blames Adam Smith for the excesses of Wall Street, or the New Testament for the Spanish Inquisition, we can speculate how the authors of the manifesto might have answered this charge.Jews and Muslims did blame the New Testament- which says there are Three Gods, one of whom was a crucified Rabbi- for the Inquisition. Both Leftists and traditional Rightists did blame Hutcheson, Hume, Smith and then Jews like Ricardo, Lassalle, &c for their materialist conception of Moral Philosophy. That is why the Left developed a sort of Heideggerian Marxism- hilariously titled 'Humanistic'- on the basis of Marx's Hegelian meanderings in the Grundisse.
I believe that, with the benefit of hindsight, Marx and Engels would confess to an important error in their analysis: insufficient reflexivity. This is to say that they failed to give sufficient thought, and kept a judicious silence, over the impact their own analysis would have on the world they were analysing.Quite false. Marx, famously, was not a Marxist- at least of the phrase mongering type. He favoured a more 'Narodnik' path for Russia which would not have featured 'Scissors crises' or Holodomors or Gulags and Mass Deportations.
Rubbish! The manifesto was commissioned by and distributed solely to highly committed readers who were far from apathetic- though some later became so.
The manifesto told a powerful story in uncompromising language, intended to stir readers from their apathy.
What Marx and Engels failed to foresee was that powerful, prescriptive texts have a tendency to procure disciples, believers – a priesthood, even – and that this faithful might use the power bestowed upon them by the manifesto to their own advantage.A Theist may believe that a Revealed Scripture bestows supernatural powers upon a particular Apostolic Succession. Similarly, a believer in Magic may believe that the Necronomicon bestows power upon disciples of Satan. Marx and Engels were neither Theists nor Satanists. They failed to foresee that a manifesto could bestow power because manifestos don't have magical or supernatural powers. Varoufakis may believe differently but then he is as stupid as shit.
With it, they might abuse other comrades, build their own power base, gain positions of influence, bed impressionable students, take control of the politburo and imprison anyone who resists them.It is not some book which gives you the power to act immorally. It is your own selfishness and wickedness.
Similarly, Marx and Engels failed to estimate the impact of their writing on capitalism itself. To the extent that the manifesto helped fashion the Soviet Union, its eastern European satellites, Castro’s Cuba, Tito’s Yugoslavia and several social democratic governments in the west, would these developments not cause a chain reaction that would frustrate the manifesto’s predictions and analysis?No. Capitalism would still fall because the rate of profit would go to zero.
After the Russian revolution and then the second world war, the fear of communism forced capitalist regimes to embrace pension schemes, national health services, even the idea of making the rich pay for poor and petit bourgeois students to attend purpose-built liberal universities.But this trend had been established before the Russian Revolution.
Meanwhile, rabid hostility to the Soviet Union stirred up paranoia and created a climate of fear that proved particularly fertile for figures such as Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot.What? There was no 'rabid hostility' to the Soviet Union in the Seventies which was when Pol Pot took power. The West supported him against Vietnam which had fallen out with China.
Stalin flourished after the West stopped backing White Generals fighting the Bolsheviks. Trotsky was a figure of fear. Churchill showered abuse upon him. Stalin, by contrast, was the beloved 'Uncle Joe' of the War time Newsreels- one of the Big Three, along with Churchill and Roosevelt.
I believe that Marx and Engels would have regretted not anticipating the manifesto’s impact on the communist parties it foreshadowed.Marx and Engels moved on from the infantile Leftism of the Manifesto to a Classical Economic Theory of the English sort. Had Marx's youngest daughter not married a bounder and not topped herself in consequence, there would have been a perfectly respectable Marxist dynasty- like the followers of Anna Freud in London- which would have overlapped with the Fabians. Marx was not concerned with 'barbaric' Russia which, in any case, would have had a highly repressive autocratic State machinery.
They would be kicking themselves that they overlooked the kind of dialectic they loved to analyse: how workers’ states would become increasingly totalitarian in their response to capitalist state aggression, and how, in their response to the fear of communism, these capitalist states would grow increasingly civilised.Democracies implemented Social Insurance because voters benefited from it. At first, there was an element of redistribution- including the notion of a 'solidarity wage'- behind this but this quickly became counter productive because it was not incentive compatible. Fear of Communism was scarcely a factor in the English speaking world because Communist Parties did not get many votes. On the other hand, in Europe, Communist parties had legitimacy because of their role in the Resistance. Still, it must be said, fear of Communism was counterbalanced by a fear of a revival of a Poujadist Right.
Blessed, of course, are the authors whose errors result from the power of their words.WTF? Marx's words were not powerful- there were more able windbags like Lasalle. It was his Economic theory- in particular his Ricardian theory of Capital- which gave him salience. This theory was erroneous- like other Economic theories- but it could always be repaired by using sophisticated mathematical techniques.
Even more blessed are those whose errors are self-correcting.A theory does not correct itself. Some guy or bunch of people has to revive it by imbuing it with new techniques and categories. That is something Varoufakis has himself tried and signally failed to do.
In our present day, the workers’ states inspired by the manifesto are almost gone, and the communist parties disbanded or in disarray.Yup! Under Xi, the Chinese Communist party isn't going back to its ideological roots. Why would you think so?
Liberated from competition with regimes inspired by the manifesto, globalised capitalism is behaving as if it is determined to create a world best explained by the manifesto.That's what's happened in the last few years. China is now ruled by the Confucian Party. It doesn't own ports in Greece nor have clients- like the Czech President- do its bidding in the Council of Europe.
What makes the manifesto truly inspiring today is its recommendation for us in the here and now, in a world where our lives are being constantly shaped by what Marx described in his earlier Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts as “a universal energy which breaks every limit and every bond and posits itself as the only policy, the only universality, the only limit and the only bond”.Marx was speaking of private property as something 'transferred into the very being of man'- i.e. what you own, owns you.
Similarly, a Vegan might say 'You are what you eat' and a Freudian might say 'you are what you fuck' and a cat-lover might say 'Miaow, miaow, miaow'.
From Uber drivers and finance ministers to banking executives and the wretchedly poor, we can all be excused for feeling overwhelmed by this “energy”.Very true! The Uber driver, speaking generally, owns his own car. Alas! this turns him into a car driving around all the time! Suppose he had bought a fridge instead of a car. Then he would have turned into a fridge. People would pay him to store their beer cans in his rectum so that they'd become nice and frosty.
Capitalism’s reach is so pervasive it can sometimes seem impossible to imagine a world without it.Unless you can make money doing so.
It is only a small step from feelings of impotence to falling victim to the assertion there is no alternative.Right! Coz when you can't get it up with your obese g.f, it is but a small step to falling victim to the assertion that there is no alternative to marrying her.
But, astonishingly (claims the manifesto), it is precisely when we are about to succumb to this idea that alternatives abound.In which case we were never really 'about to succumb' to it.
What we don’t need at this juncture are sermons on the injustice of it all, denunciations of rising inequality or vigils for our vanishing democratic sovereignty.But we do need Varoufakis talking shite.
Nor should we stomach desperate acts of regressive escapism: the cry to return to some pre-modern, pre-technological state where we can cling to the bosom of nationalism.Because we need to go back to 1848.
What the manifesto promotes in moments of doubt and submission is a clear-headed, objective assessment of capitalism and its ills, seen through the cold, hard light of rationality.If the manifesto really has a 'clear-headed objective assessment of capitalism' then why the fuck did Marx spend the next couple of decades developing an Economic theory?
The manifesto argues that the problem with capitalism is not that it produces too much technology, or that it is unfair. Capitalism’s problem is that it is irrational.So? It is irrational to feel love or joy or hope. If Capitalism's big problem is that it is Human, not Vulcan, then it doesn't have any major malfunction.
Capital’s success at spreading its reach via accumulation for accumulation’s sake is causing human workers to work like machines for a pittance, while the robots are programmed to produce stuff that the workers can no longer afford and the robots do not need.Where? Every country where Capital has spread now has a larger number of people enjoying a higher level of prosperity than ever before. Sure, if they breed like bunnies or if migration is unrestricted or if subsidiarity based Tiebout models aren't implemented, then a lot of people will still be very poor. But that's not Capital's fault.
Capital fails to make rational use of the brilliant machines it engenders, condemning whole generations to deprivation, a decrepit environment, underemployment and zero real leisure from the pursuit of employment and general survival.Really? Does Google not make good use of its 'brilliant machines'? If so, that's market sensitive information. It means an arbitrage opportunity exists. The Market can fix the problem.
Varoufakis has helped condemn whole generations of Greeks to deprivation, a decrepit environment etc. But it was in the name of Marx, not Hayek, that this was done.
Even capitalists are turned into angst-ridden automatons. They live in permanent fear that unless they commodify their fellow humans, they will cease to be capitalists – joining the desolate ranks of the expanding precariat-proletariat.Does Bill Gates really look like an angst-ridden automaton? What about Elon Musk?
Managers, not Capitalists, may face increased stress- but that's a different story.
If capitalism appears unjust it is because it enslaves everyone, rich and poor, wasting human and natural resources.If telling stupid lies appears unjust it is because it involves telling lies about everything. It wastes resources.
The same “production line” that pumps out untold wealth also produces deep unhappiness and discontent on an industrial scale.Varoufakis is obsessed with the factory floor though only a small minority of workers now toil away on an assembly line. Why not go the whole hog and speak of the slaves in the cotton-fields being whipped by Simon Legree?
So, our first task – according to the manifesto – is to recognise the tendency of this all-conquering “energy” to undermine itself.How true! If you are an Uber driver then your first task is to recognise that your tendency to turn into a car is actually undermining itself because every time you change your oil or pump gas up your rectum you get very very sick.
When asked by journalists who or what is the greatest threat to capitalism today, I defy their expectations by answering: capital!What did they expect you to say? The Nazis? But, of course, for you Nazism was Capitalism as represented by Herr Schauble.
A sensible man might say 'China is using Capital- its money power- to undermine the Democratic West. It is happening in Greece as we speak.
Of course, this is an idea I have been plagiarising for decades from the manifesto. Given that it is neither possible nor desirable to annul capitalism’s “energy”, the trick is to help speed up capital’s development (so that it burns up like a meteor rushing through the atmosphere) while, on the other hand, resisting (through rational, collective action) its tendency to steamroller our human spirit.Suppose you attach a rocket thruster to a meteor so as to speed up its entry into the earth's atmosphere. Will it burn up faster? Nope. More of it will reach the earth causing a much bigger crater.
Suppose a big steam roller is coming towards us. Should we all get together and push it back? Nope. That way we all die. We should run around the side and climb up into the cockpit so as to turn off its engine or steer it away from its destructive path.
In short, the manifesto’s recommendation is that we push capital to its limits while limiting its consequences and preparing for its socialisation.Sheer nonsense! Marx was calling for the working men of Europe to unite against the Holy Alliance. He did not say, 'become a merchant banker', he said ' Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.'
We need more robots, better solar panels, instant communication and sophisticated green transport networks.So we need smart people who know about Science to do cutting edge stuff. Talking shite about some pamphlet published in 1848, on the other hand is not needed by anybody.
But equally, we need to organise politically to defend the weak, empower the many and prepare the ground for reversing the absurdities of capitalism.Organising politically means listening to shitheads, like Varoufakis, talk shite. Why bother?
In practical terms, this means treating the idea that there is no alternative with the contempt it deserves while rejecting all calls for a “return” to a less modernised existence. There was nothing ethical about life under earlier forms of capitalism. TV shows that massively invest in calculated nostalgia, such as Downton Abbey, should make us glad to live when we do. At the same time, they might also encourage us to floor the accelerator of change.Science guys might have their foot on an accelerator. Talking shite is a foot on the brakes. We need to disintermediate shitheads like Varoufakis. A first step would be to recognise that Economists, by and large, are shite.
The manifesto is one of those emotive texts that speak to each of us differently at different times, reflecting our own circumstances. Some years ago, I called myself an erratic, libertarian Marxist and I was roundly disparaged by non-Marxists and Marxists alike. Soon after, I found myself thrust into a political position of some prominence, during a period of intense conflict between the then Greek government and some of capitalism’s most powerful agents.Herr Schauble? The guy worked as a tax-man! That's 'Capitalism's most powerful agent'?
Rereading the manifesto for the purposes of writing this introduction has been a little like inviting the ghosts of Marx and Engels to yell a mixture of censure and support in my ear.Coz Marx and Engels think Varoufakis is a World Historical Personality and worth censuring and supporting. How vain is this silly man.
Adults in the Room, my memoir of the time I served as Greece’s finance minister in 2015, tells the story of how the Greek spring was crushed via a combination of brute force (on the part of Greece’s creditors) and a divided front within my own government.The 'Greek Spring'? Really? Who is the Assad or Mubarak in this scenario? In which secret police cell was Varoufakis whipped and anally violated? Sorry! I forgot. It was the 'Global Minatour' which rammed its horns up his rectum.
It is as honest and accurate as I could make it. Seen from the perspective of the manifesto, however, the true historical agents were confined to cameo appearances or to the role of quasi-passive victims. “Where is the proletariat in your story?” I can almost hear Marx and Engels screaming at me now. “Should they not be the ones confronting capitalism’s most powerful, with you supporting from the sidelines?”Varoufakis, as an Economist, was supposed to say to the Eurozone Council, 'guys! Austerity violates price stability because of non-convexities and dynamic effects. Reflation is legally mandated upon us. Look, I have with me econometric studies supporting this conclusion endorsed by the leading Universities and Think Tanks and Nobel Prize winning Economists across the globe.'
Schauble might still have stuck to his guns, but Draghi and the French would have got something to work with. Essentially, the moment a purely legal argument is made then all the Finance Ministers have to go back to their countries and get their Civil Servants to pore over the details.
Everybody expected Varoufakis to blind his Eurozone colleagues with science. Furthermore a legal challenge to Austerity, on the basis of 'price stability' could have been mounted. Grown ups could have thrashed the matter out and disintermediated journalists writing about lazy Greeks or Nazi Germans.
Instead, what happened? Varoufakis stuck his hands down the back of his pants and pulled out something he called chocolate cake. His remedy for Austerity was to invite everybody to eat his stinky chocolate cake. The Eurozone ministers shunned him. They wouldn't accept his company at dinner.
Varoufakis now says he ought to have involved the proletariat. What does this mean? Presumably, he should have appealed to the Hotel staff to go on strike to force the Eurozone ministers to share Varofakis's chocolate cake.
Anything and everything Varoufakis reads or hears or sees offers him solace because it endorses his own view that everything is a liberal- even libertarian- text proclaiming the chocolate cake he produces from his anus to be such a confection as Marie Antoinette could have used to end hunger and defuse the violent tendencies of the Parisian mob.
Thankfully, rereading the manifesto has offered some solace too, endorsing my view of it as a liberal text – a libertarian one, even.
Where the manifesto lambasts bourgeois-liberal virtues, it does so because of its dedication and even love for them.So- it's just sour grapes.
Liberty happiness, autonomy, individuality, spirituality, self-guided development are ideals that Marx and Engels valued above everything else.Like what? Slavery & Sadness?
If they are angry with the bourgeoisie, it is because the bourgeoisie seeks to deny the majority any opportunity to be free.The reason people are angry with Marxists is because they want to deny everybody any opportunity to be free.
Given Marx and Engels’ adherence to Hegel’s fantastic idea that no one is free as long as one person is in chains, their quarrel with the bourgeoisie is that they sacrifice everybody’s freedom and individuality on capitalism’s altar of accumulation.Given Marx and Engels' adherence to some worthless metaphysical tosh they quarrel with everybody who regards them as stupid gobshites. They pretend the working man won't regard their shite as shite but rather as chocolate cake.
But it does involve accepting chocolate cake which Varoufakis produces by sticking his hand down the back of his pants.
Although Marx and Engels were not anarchists, they loathed the state and its potential to be manipulated by one class to suppress another. At best, they saw it as a necessary evil that would live on in the good, post-capitalist future coordinating a classless society. If this reading of the manifesto holds water, the only way of being a communist is to be a libertarian one. Heeding the manifesto’s call to “Unite!” is in fact inconsistent with becoming card-carrying Stalinists or with seeking to remake the world in the image of now-defunct communist regimes.
When everything is said and done, then, what is the bottom line of the manifesto? And why should anyone, especially young people today, care about history, politics and the like?Because Varoufakis's chocolate cake is soooooo tasty.
Marx and Engels based their manifesto on a touchingly simple answer: authentic human happiness and the genuine freedom that must accompany it. For them, these are the only things that truly matter.That's right! We don't want none of your fake human happiness or ersatz freedom here! The only that that truly matters is eating Varoufakis's chocolate cake.
Their manifesto does not rely on strict Germanic invocations of duty, or appeals to historic responsibilities to inspire us to act. It does not moralise, or point its finger. Marx and Engels attempted to overcome the fixations of German moral philosophy and capitalist profit motives, with a rational, yet rousing appeal to the very basics of our shared human nature.Which consists in offering one's poop around as a dainty confectionery.
Key to their analysis is the ever-expanding chasm between those who produce and those who own the instruments of production.Because no workers own shares in the companies they work for.
The problematic nexus of capital and waged labour stops us from enjoying our work and our artefacts, and turns employers and workers, rich and poor, into mindless, quivering pawns who are being quick-marched towards a pointless existence by forces beyond our control.Which is why people won't eat our delicious chocolate cake.
But why do we need politics to deal with this? Isn’t politics stultifying, especially socialist politics, which Oscar Wilde once claimed “takes up too many evenings”? Marx and Engels’ answer is: because we cannot end this idiocy individually; because no market can ever emerge that will produce an antidote to this stupidity. Collective, democratic political action is our only chance for freedom and enjoyment. And for this, the long nights seem a small price to pay.The price of eating Varoufakis, on any other shithead's, chocolate cake is weeks of diarrhea. That's a good thing, in his book, because we can now feed the whole world!
Humanity may succeed in securing social arrangements that allow for “the free development of each” as the “condition for the free development of all”. But, then again, we may end up in the “common ruin” of nuclear war, environmental disaster or agonising discontent. In our present moment, there are no guarantees. We can turn to the manifesto for inspiration, wisdom and energy but, in the end, what prevails is up to us.So get pooping and eating already! You know you want to! Coprophagy is the only social arrangement which allows 'the free development of each'- i.e. shitting all over the place- to become the condition for 'the free development of all' because shit will be universally available for purposes of consumption in a manner which militates against any anally retentive 'accumulation' or petit bourgeois norms of cleanliness or continence.
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