The Communist Manifesto Turns 160 ! Happy Birthday ?

[Better Believe It]

The Communist Manifesto Turns 160
By Barbara Ehrenreich
The Nation
October 1, 2008

This year marks the 160th anniversary of The Communist Manifesto and capitalism--a k a "free enterprise"--seems willing to observe the occasion by dropping dead. On Monday night, some pundits were warning that the ATMs might run dry and hinting that the only safe investment left is canned beans. Apocalypse or extortion? No one seems to know, though the populist part of the populace has been leaning toward the latter. An e-mail whipping around the web this morning has the subject line "Sign on Wall Street yesterday," and shows a hand-lettered cardboard sign saying, "JUMP! You Fuckers!"

The Manifesto makes for quaint reading today. All that talk about "production," for example: Did they actually make things in those days? Did the proletariat really slave away in factories instead of call centers? But on one point Marx and Engels proved right: within capitalist societies, or at least the kind of wildly unregulated capitalism America has had, the rich got richer, the workers got poorer, and the erstwhile middle class has been sliding toward ruin. The last two outcomes are what Marx called "immiseration," which, in translation, is the process you're undergoing when you have cancer and no health insurance or a mortgage payment due and no paycheck coming in.

Marx predicted that capitalism would fall in a spirited, proactive, fashion: the workers, fed up with immiseration, would revolt, seize the "means of production" and insist on running the show themselves, that being the original, pre-Soviet, notion of socialism. The revolution didn't happen, of course, at least not here. For the past several years, American workers have sweetly acquiesced to declining wages, rising prices, speed-ups at work, disappearing pensions and increasingly threadbare health insurance. While CEO pay escalated to the eight-figure range and above, so-called ordinary Americans took on second jobs and crowded into multi-generational households with uncomfortably long waits for the bathroom.

Marx's argument was that the coexistence of great wealth for the few and growing poverty for the many is not only morally objectionable, it's also inherently unstable. He may have been wrong about the reasons for the instability, but no one can any longer deny it's there. When the greed of the rich collided with the needs of the poor--for a home, for example--the result was a global credit meltdown.

Please read the entire article at:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081013/ehrenreich

[Oregone]

1. I'm still waiting for the Dunkin Donuts' workers to seize their deep fryer and empower themselves

Instead they beckon to their master, cowering in fear. Marx most surely didn't predict such paralyzing fear and acquiescence among the proletariat, did he?

[deaniac21]

2. I'm playing The Internationale, in tribute!!

[Better Believe It]

3. Here's the English Translation Of The Internationale

Literal English translation from the Original French Lyrics

First stanza

Arise, wretched of the earth
Arise, convicts of hunger
Reason thunders in its volcano
This is the eruption of the end
Of the past let us wipe the slate clean
Masses, slaves, arise, arise
The world is about to change its foundation
We are nothing, let us be all
|: This is the final struggle
Let us gather together, and tomorrow
The Internationale
Will be the human race :|

Second stanza
There are no supreme saviours
Neither God, nor Caesar, nor tribune.
Producers, let us save ourselves
Decree the common welfare
That the thief return his plunder,
That the spirit be pulled from its prison
Let us fan the forge ourselves
Strike the iron while it is hot
|: This is the final struggle
Let us stand together, and tomorrow
The Internationale
Will be the human race :|

Third stanza
The state represses and the law cheats
The tax bleeds the unfortunate
No duty is imposed on the rich
'Rights of the poor' is a hollow phrase
Enough languishing in custody
Equality wants other laws:
No rights without obligations, it says,
And as well, no obligations without rights
|: This is the final struggle
Let us stand together, and tomorrow
The Internationale
Will be the human race :|

Fourth stanza
Hideous in their self-glorification
Kings of the mine and rail
Have they ever done anything other
Than steal work?
Into the coffers of that lot,
What work creates has melted
In demanding that they give it back
The people wants only its due.
|: This is the final struggle
Let us stand together, and tomorrow
The Internationale
Will be the human race :|

Fifth stanza
The kings make us drunk with their fumes,
Peace among ourselves, war to the tyrants!
Let the armies go on strike,
Guns in the air, and break ranks
If these cannibals insist
On making heroes of us,
Soon they will know our bullets
Are for our own generals
|: This is the final struggle
Let us stand together, and tomorrow
The Internationale
Will be the human race :|

Sixth stanza
Labourers, peasants, we are
The great party of workers
The earth belongs only to men
The idle will go reside elsewhere
How much of our flesh they feed on,
But if the ravens and vultures
Disappear one of these days
The sun will still shine
|: This is the final struggle
Let us stand together, and tomorrow
The Internationale
Will be the human race :|


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internationale