joanna wrote:
>
> Carl Remick wrote:
>
> > Am always amazed how complacent NY Times columnists are even when
> > howling with outrage about systemic abuses. E.g.:
> >
> > Being able simultaneously to observe that some individuals "get
> > outrageous pay" while also maintaining "nobody is getting ripped off"
> > -- that's doublethink at its most redoubtable.
>
> ...
> Well, the first commandment of Capitalism is that greed is good; it's a
> positive force. Except of course when labor is greedy or "unreasonable"
> or "inflexible."
The "outrageous pay" presumably comes from the surplus value appropriated by the corporation. Hence it has to do with distribution among the collective owners of that surplus value, and it does not affect the size of the initial surplus. Hence if anyone is getting "ripped off" it is other capitalists. The workers have already been "ripped off" before this division of the "spoils."
But my language is misleading as well, hence the scare quotes. Joanna offers a moral judgment of capitalism, which perhaps makes the blood flow and the pores open, but it does not really help in understanding the horror in which we are trapped and which we need to understand as fully as possible in order to destroy it.
Carrol