Thread: Karl Marx and the Global Economic Crisis

Karl Marx and the Global Economic Crisis
Are we getting good Marx? I think not


by William Bowles
September 1, 2009
WilliamBowles.info





I often wonder how Karl Marx would react were he to find himself here, right now? After all, he too lived through momentous and world-changing times, perhaps even more so than the changes we are experiencing, given that his was the world that gave birth to the rise of the Machine and capitalism as we know it. Born on the cusp so-to-speak and I too, was born on the cusp, 23 July, 1945, a couple of weeks before the empire showed the world that it was truly barbarian when it dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I also caught the tail-end of 20th century socialist culture, warts an’ all. But I did more than just catch the tail-end, I inherited the culture of the two generations of lefties that preceded mine, one that stretched from here in the UK to the edge of the Black Sea. Worker intellectuals are a unique product of the Industrial Revolution, my father was one of them. Self-taught, multi-skilled (and talented), his father started out working for some lordship or other as a plantsman, growing orchids I think; moved to the city were he managed a Cross & Blackwell warehouse. He was a socialist by nature, a believer in ‘natural justice’ and he communicated it to all of his eight kids.

On the other side, my mother’s family were first generation immigrants from Russia who got here some time in the late 19th century and they brought with them their Russian/Jewish socialist experiences. The connection between the two families is of course politics, a shared culture of struggle and ideas. Fascinating really, and I’m really very lucky to have been born into it as it gave me a unique window through which to view the world.

Okay, the 17th century was the real incubator of capitalism, the world of Hobbes and his Leviathon, the world where the European merchants and their banker pals, fat from slavery, trade and general pillage of the known planet, were able to finance those nascent scientific/philosophical investigations that produced, amongst other things, the idea that a human being could be reduced to a mere machine, a collection of gears, pulleys, springs and levers.

“Life is but a motion of limbs… For what is the heart, but a spring; and the nerves, but so many strings; and the joints but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body.â€

Marx and his Minions are on their own ~ we ain't in it together. I would suggest the Liberals learn how to hunt for food and be a hunter gatherer or they will not make it this time around. The old game plan of deciding how to divide food up after someone else brings in the harvest or brings back game from the hunt didn't work well in lean times and it will be even worse in the vary near future.