[lbo-talk] Framed (Was Everything's coming up roses)

Bill Bartlett billbartlett at enterprize.net.au
Mon Jun 23 19:15:55 PDT 2003


At 2:56 PM -0700 23/6/03, Mike Ballard wrote:


>F. Engels wrote in his 1886 intro to CAPITAL vol I:
>
>The sighed for period of prosperity will not come; as
>often as we seem to perceive its heralding symptoms,
>so often do they again vanish into air. Meanwhile,
>each succeeding winter brings up afresh the great
>question, "what to do with the unemployed"; but while
>the number of the unemployed keeps swelling from year
>to year, there is nobody to answer that question; and
>we can almost calculate the moment when the unemployed
>losing patience will take their own fate into their
>own hands.

The dilemma is, as someone has pointed out, the poor are all guilty of something. This serves a very useful purpose in keeping them from organising to "take their own fate into their own hands". Few leaders can arise from the ranks of the poor who cannot be easily destroyed by bringing them to account for the sins they must necessarily commit to survive.

Engels may have failed to see this.

Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas



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