People who get angry when Obama called socialist cheer Karl Marx quotes

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Xtra-Chromosome: the self-professed gay, communist Christian

xchrom (75,670 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail Ignore


 Karl Marx: 10 great quotes on his birthday
http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/2012/0504/Karl-Marx-10-great-quotes-on-his-birthday/On-the-99-percent

***snip

1. On 'the 99 percent'

"You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths." (From "The Communist Manifesto," 1848)

2. On Ponzi schemes

"In every stockjobbing swindle every one knows that some time or other the crash must come, but every one hopes that it may fall on the head of his neighbor, after he himself has caught the shower of gold and placed it in safety." (From "Capital: Critique of Political Economy," 1867)


3. On slacking off at work

"Capital is dead labor, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the laborer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labor-power he has purchased of him.

"If the laborer consumes his disposable time for himself, he robs the capitalist." (From "Capital")


4. On worker protections

"Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society." (From "Capital")


5. On religion

"Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." (From the "Introduction to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right," 1843)

6. On drudgery

"The fact that labour is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself." (From "Estranged Labour," 1844)


7. On consumerism

"Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is only ours when we have it – when it exists for us as capital, or when it is directly possessed, eaten, drunk, worn, inhabited, etc., – in short, when it is used by us. Although private property itself again conceives all these direct realisations of possession only as means of life, and the life which they serve as means is the life of private property – labour and conversion into capital." (From "Private Property and Communism," 1844)


8. On the mainstream media

"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas." (From "The German Ideology," 1845)


9. On not wanting to be pigeonholed

"For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic and must remain so if he does not wish to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have in mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic." (From "The German Ideology")


10. On Marxism

"If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist." (Quoted by Friedrich Engels, in a letter to Eduard Bernstein, 1882)

What follows is a fap-fest of adulation for ol' Karl.

Dissenters make a cursory appearance but are then shouted down.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002647331#post6

[JohnnyReb]

2. On Ponzi schemes

"In every stockjobbing swindle every one knows that some time or other the crash must come, but every one hopes that it may fall on the head of his neighbor, after he himself has caught the shower of gold and placed it in safety." (From "Capital: Critique of Political Economy," 1867)

Social Security springs to mind....I'm collecting but will you....or your children?

[Karin]

This response surprised me:

Archae (22,287 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail Ignore

6. How about noting just what a horse's ass Karl Marx was.

Marx was a reactionary, and he was reacting to brutal dictatorships that had been in place for centuries, like the Russian Czars.

Things are different, Marx's views are failures, and brutal dictatorships are on their way out.
They are going out kicking and screaming, but they are on their way out.

Response to Archae (Reply #11)
Sat May 5, 2012, 11:03 AM
 coalition_unwilling (9,351 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail Ignore

20. You are so full of shit as to stagger belief. Are you seriously

maintaining that Czarist Russia was better for the average citizen than the USSR? Or that pre-revolutionary China was better for the average citizen than life after Mao? I suppose the average Cuban had it better under Batista in your world view.

What life?  They're dead. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Response to coalition_unwilling (Reply #81)
Sat May 5, 2012, 07:17 PM
 UnrepentantLiberal (4,284 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail Ignore

85. Absolutely nothing would convince you.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor#_

And then we have accusations of being a (gasp!) Right-winger!  Here is post #11:

Archae (22,287 posts)

11. Marx's view of human nature is a failure.

Marx believed in Utopias, but whenever any government was based on Marx's views, they became as bad or worse than the dictatorships they were.

Just look at North Korea.
You want a "1% and 99%?"
It's all-too-noticable there, with the party elite fat and happy while the common person starves. Literally.

And then later on in the thread, someone takes high offense at post #11:

Response to josephslaton (Reply #34)
Sat May 5, 2012, 07:00 PM
 coalition_unwilling (9,351 posts)

84. Post #11 represents ignorance, shrillness and slander, all

combined in a single post. Absolutely ridiculous. There's the right-winger right on this thread, speaking of right wingers.

        Slander.  What an asshole. 

[Chris_]

Thou shalt have no other Gods before Marx and Engles.

[67 Rover]

Thou shalt have no other Gods before Marx and Engles.

First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin, then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.

Sorry your post immediately brought this to mind.

[Chris_]

For the 100% Dear Leader types at the DUmp, there is no God except Keynes and Obama is his Prophet.

[DumbAss Tanker]

Maybe they were just upset with Obama being called a Socialist because they felt like that was making him out as too much of a Right-winger...