On Wed, 20 May 1998, Dhlazare wrote:
> Gosh, Lou, and you're lamenting the absence of a sense of humor on the left?
> In calling for one and a half cheers for Bill Gates, I was being ironic. Of
> course, socialists should not cheer on monopolization. But they should
> recognize that monopolization is an attempt to socialize the means of
> production within the confines of capitalism -- a doomed effort, needless to
> say, but one which supposedly serves to heighten the contradictions. While we
> shouldn't cheer on Gates, neither should we hop on the Jeffersonian/petty-
> bourgeois/antitrust bandwagon, which holds that small capitalism is more
> efficient than big capitalism.
>
> By the way, Trotsky was far from humorless -- I'd describe his style as
> quietly witty. Lenin had his flashes of humor too, while Marx, of course, was
> devoted to the dialectical paradox -- religion as a plea for mercy in a
> merciless world and the like -- which, if not actually witty, was at least
> sharp and entertaining.
>
> Dan Lazare.
Marx was pretty funny at times. Wasn't there something in Critique of the Gotha program about someone swindling for all he's worth to end Capitalism?
As for Monopolies, they ain't, relatively speaking, bad places to work, given their social welfare programs, job ladders, adjudicative procedures. I suppose one could say that are socialized in some sense, and the pay is usually better than in "competitive" businesses.
Incidentally Doug, is that why you don't like Korten? Because he makes populist attacks MNCs rather then dealing with the ruling class behind them, a class that given modern portfolio theory, could live quite well sucking rents from hundreds of formally distinct medium-sized corporations?