Marxism
Categories: Econ
At Marx U, you don't pick your class—your class picks you.
Meet Karl, venerable founder of Marx U. He's a big, bearded, 19th-century bourgeois, and he spent much of his adulthood in the British Library. Imagine his portrait on the wall: he's not smiling.
Okay, he may not seem like the likeliest founder of the world's most radical intellectual and political movement, but beneath that grandfatherly exterior lurks a wickedly subversive mind.
For Karl, it's all about the power struggle: rich versus poor, owners versus workers, cats versus dogs. And when we say it's all about the power struggle for this dude, we mean it's allllll about the power struggle. We're looking at you, literature. That's right: for Marx, the power struggle plays out in every novel, poem, movie, song, whatever.
According to Marxists, any time you write, you're advancing your cause. Don't know what your cause is? Marxists sure do.
According to Marxists, every story tells us something about the world—and about which side the author is on. The goal of the Marxist critic is to figure out what that is. And thanks to Marx, we can make some pretty good guesses before we even open the book.
Say what? Well, Marxists think they have the answer to pretty much any question you might have. They even think they can predict the future. So what's this all about? Is it mind-reading? Sorcery? Mumbo-jumbo? Well, according to Marxists, what they have to offer is a total theory of history and society. We're talking a total theory of everything.
So pick up your hammers and sickles, comrades, because it's time for Communist Literature 101.
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Finance: What is capitalism?7 Views
And finance Allah shmoop What is capitalism Oh well there
are really two faces of capitalism you know kind of
like Aria on game of thrones Yeah or like any
little kid trick or treating in Halloween or you know
two face So let's start with what capitalism is not
Hello Communism Yes your darkness our old friend Communism is
all about the government being quote smarter than the market's
unquote that is Communism believes that via central planning in
estimating and bureaucratic controls the markets for pretty much anything
can be run better fairer and more efficiently than by
its polar opposite cousin capitalism That's the economic application to
the political will that under a communist system politically everyone
is equal fish you know two cellphones good for cellphones
bad Something like that Whereas communism is a frank instant
ian attempt at cloning in or reproducing life in a
lab and then copying it market by market locale by
locale capitalism is well financial Darwinism Survival of the financially
fittest More or less Communism failed globally in hindsight that
so much for its ideology of governments controlling things But
for the one little element that was never addressed in
the Soviet laboratories where communism was at that element Yes
corruption Yeah When central planning happens enormous power is concentrated
among a very small number of individuals usually individuals who
came to power through Machiavellian means often military or other
yes men Grey flannel suit wearers not through believers in
a cause innovators visionaries or business runners So the very
powerful became very corrupt and the ideology of political communism
I'LL never really came to be tested on a global
stage fairly and squarely where it has been tested and
works has been in tiny enclaves with rare compositions Take
the Kibbutz in Israel Well a kibbutz is a collective
farm Everyone shares equally and well pretty much everything The
farm produces one for all and all for one like
Israeli Musketeers or something like that The big diff Well
they're all equally well educated They're all from the same
background same culture same unfortunate run ins with boils So
it's easy to divvy things equally when you feel like
the guy or gal across the table was truly equal
to you In talent and drive and other natural gifts
you get two cell phones and you get to cell
phones and you get two cell phones Yeah all equal
And yeah a kibbutz structure would never work in a
large city where the disparity and talent is usually massive
from top to bottom So where does that put capitalism
Well structurally capitalism refers most directly to a frictionless set
of transactions No controls no governing no government just perfect
markets where supply and demand intersect here and prices live
within nana meters of here There isn't the kind of
one person can change everything kind of corruption that you
get in a central bank or central allocation system The
capital markets the brutal Darwinism of companies competing in the
marketplace gives a kind of truth or honesty or really
quote fair unquote price that applies more or less everywhere
in the system At its most extreme we witness capitalism
at work in the stock market At any given moment
tens of thousands of investors are inspecting what Amazon is
really worth and letting their investing dollars speak for themselves
The trading of stocks is almost a perfect market with
no central government dictating what it thinks Amazon should be
Trading at two thirty p M On a Tuesday in
a communist stock market While the government might dictate that
well today Amazon should trade for fifteen hundred twelve dollars
a share and for a ten dollar fee per share
trade paid to the government trader you too can be
a proud owner but that's the price Fifteen hundred twelve
bucks Take it or leave it Communism in this sense
runs is a kind of command economy That said the
U S Is not a perfect capitalistic set of markets
either It's just a relatively capitalistic approach to transacting in
mark but when compared with other systems of commerce in
the US we have laws they're actively in fourth and
violators are punished severely and this has been going on
for centuries The positive result Trust in general Investors around
the world trust in the American capital market system They
trust that accounting and financial disclosures are fair and full
and honest Just remember that capitalism is financial Darwinism under
the fair rubric of laws and structures analogous to what
biology and physics and geographic location due to the evolution
of species of animals cos that best fit their contemporaneously
environment thrive and those that don't well don't and somewhere
Toys R Us and the Dodo Bird are living happily
ever after together you know along with Sears and soon
target in a whole bunch of others that'LL be Amazon