In
Theories of Surplus Value Marx conceded that the middleclass was actually growing under capitalism, not disappearing as he had previously held in
The Communist Manifesto and
Das Kapital, and more honest Marxist theorists have since conceded that the working class is not a culturally homogeneous, but a culturally heterogeneous component of production comprised of competing interests, and one that has become increasingly economically mobile under capitalism from generation to generation. Strike (1) those fallacious critiques of capitalism, the guts of dialectic materialism, insofar as they pertain to the allegedly historical antagonism between the oppressed proletariat and the exploitative bourgeoisie, (2) the abject stupidity of "from each according to his ability to each according to his need" and (3) the conceptualization of surplus value as an injustice or a problem to be solved, if not by bargaining than by compulsory wealth redistribution: what more must the world endure at the hands of this debacle before we toss it into the ash heap of history and move on?
Marxists disregard the rise in wages over time under capitalism as industries reinvest surplus value and grow. They gloss over the destructive results of over-bargaining industries into stagnation and bankruptcy.
Take a close look at Detroit.
Marx moralistically imagined surplus value to be the unpaid surplus labor of the working class. But surplus value is in fact the stuff of reinvestment and growth, the startup costs of producing new products and services, future wage increases, more jobs of varying expertise and levels of compensation despite increased automation, improved living standards, strategic surpluses, which are essentially production costs, as they must be maintained and replaced. The latter are not distributable profit. And don't forget about the public infrastructure and the all those public services, for good or bad. Don't forget about all that governmentally funded research, the scientific, medical and technological advances thereof. Don't forget about the exploration of space and the oceans, and the scientific, medical and technological advances thereof. All these things in addition to the strictly business concerns of the private sector were paid for by capitalist systems . . . way beyond what any communist system could ever dream of. . . .
. . . That's the complex reality and the magic of capitalism, but in the stagnant, make believe world of Marxism, that zero-sum-game fantasy, surplus value is merely the accumulation and centralization of transferable capital and power. Hence, the supposed fatal flaw
or irresolvable contradiction of capitalism, namely, the
falling profits-unemployment crisis of over-accumulation.
Nonsense. Aside from the cyclical corrections against over-production, the only entities known to sane men to cause or exacerbate economic downturns is the overbearing governments of corrupt and tyrannical factions.
In recent history, this supposed Achilles' heel of capitalism is in fact the wrecking ball of economic collectivism: the punitive taxation, regulation or nationalization of the means of production. Businesses that don't continuously innovate and grow, stagnant, shrink and die. Businesses besieged by overbearing governments go elsewhere and take their jobs with them . . . or die.
Privately owned surplus value is the economic lifeblood of the developed world. It's not a horded and withheld commodity. It's not a limited commodity either. . . .
"Wait a minute! Stop right there, Mister! Material resources are finite," the unimaginative rube of the zero-sum-game mentality hysterically exclaims.
. . . Human ingenuity—the essence of technological innovation, ever-increasing efficiency—is not finite! Privately owned surplus value is readily attainable for all the world, but for the meddling of corrupt and oppressive regimes. It is this factor that alludes the Marxist . . . or does he simply turn a blind eye on the obvious resolution of the supposed contradiction of capitalism? Pretend not to see it?
I'm not kidding. In every rendition of the supposed problem of over-accumulated capital I've ever read, the Marxist author invariably claims that this critique has never been satisfactorily answered by free-market theorists. The factor of human ingenuity and its effects on production capital have been understood for at least two centuries. Marxism is sheer political ideology posing as an economic science propagated by rank sociopaths. If this supposed flaw of capitalism were real, capitalism would have universally collapsed long before now. In the meantime, the only economic paradigm that has collapsed every time it's been tried is communism precisely because it stifles the very factor its theorists obtusely disregard: human incentive and ingenuity.
A funny thing happened along the way that leads to the formulation of the Marxist's psychological make up: the supply of material resources is finite, but the Marxist's penchant for self-delusion is boundless.
Forty years ago: Global cooling! Today: Global Warming! And moreover, Over-population! Diminishing Resources! It's all a bunch of hooey, the stuff of tyrants and bootlicking Chicken Littles.
In any event, what is the Marxist to do when in fact the working class is a culturally heterogeneous component of production whose standard of living has dramatically improved under capitalism?
Well, its constituents must be programmed from early childhood to disregard the discriminations of common logic and eschew the conventions of common morality. But not only that, they must be protected from the economic depredations of false consciousness.
Hence, they must be made to think of themselves as the victims of those who own the means of production and all that surplus value.
Toss that fishing pole in the lake and hand 'em a pitchfork.
In other words, make 'em dumb as dirt. Manageable drones. Turn 'em into sexual degenerates bereft of familial affections/allegiances:
the Marcusean polymorphous perversity of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Hence, the intellectual and moral mediocrity and uniformity of relativism with a chip on its shoulder. This is cultural Marxism in a nutshell, more commonly known today as political correctness or multiculturalism. As economic Marxism is the deconstruction of the actualities of the factors of production and the expropriation of the means of production, cultural Marxism is the deconstruction of Western culture, of the influences of Christianity especially, and the expropriation of ideas and expression.
(There is a special place in hell set aside for the likes of sociopaths like Herbert Marcuse, monsters who sexually molest and corrupt the minds of vulnerable innocence. What kind of person can look at the sweet, cherubic face of a little girl, for example, all pigtails and ribbons, and whisper filth in her ears? Such monsters will never understand anything about the rights of others except at the business end of a loaded gun pointed at their stupid heads. The very thought of this cretin makes my blood boil. Today's sex education programs in the government schools are predicated on Marcuse's model.)
Since the theory of Marxism is necessarily true by definition, i.e., that all of history is a struggle between the powerful and the oppressed progressively moving toward that overwhelming conclusion of a stateless Utopia, the uncooperative regressions of history must be due to the false signals or the misdirection of human culture obscuring the proletariat's view of its true interests. Marx was aware of the extant cultural hindrances, of course, but it was a group of German communists who in the 1920's established a think tank and, initially, based on the definitive observations of Marxist theorists Gyorgy Lukacs of Hungary ("Who will save us from Western civilization?") and Antonio Gramsci of Italy, contrived a systematic methodology for expropriating culture. Marcuse joined the group in 1932 with his Neo-Freudian theory of sexual liberation as a component of the proletariat's cultural revolution against the benighted tribal tradition of the biological family.
(By the way, the anthem of the 1960's free love movement "Make love, not war" is Marcuse, a hero to the likes of Bill Ayers, Kathy Boudin, Mark Rudd, Eleanor Raskin. . . .)
Comprehensively, this was revolution by another means, the subversion of thought and morality, and the suppression of opposing views. The enlightened would artificially expedite the actualization of the object of the historical dialectic. Oh, the irony! In the 1930's, the members of the Frankfort School of Critical Theory fled Nazi Germany for America and set up shop at Columbia University.
The origination and the history of cultural Marxism is well-documented. -
M.D. Rawlings
etc..., etc..., etc...
