Some time ago I posted a direct question to this list to spell out what it is that the left want. Instead, people posted for the most part a laundry list of what they wanted to get rid off - abolish this, end that, undo the past blah, blah, blah. A handful of POSITIVE proposals that were listed - universal health care, living wage, or stronger union representation were quite conventional and well within the bounds of mainstream discourse. Many EU social democracies are more radical than that. ***************************************************
While I'd agree that Marx and Engels were for social ownnership of the means of production, what theOld Man actually said was:
After this very long and, I fear, tedious exposition, which I was obliged to enter into to do some justice to the subject matter, I shall conclude by proposing the following resolutions:
Firstly. A general rise in the rate of wages would result in a fall of the general rate of profit, but, broadly speaking, not affect the prices of commodities.
Secondly. The general tendency of capitalist production is not to raise, but to sink the average standard of wages.
Thirdly. Trades Unions work well as centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. The fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class that is to say the ultimate abolition of the wages system.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/ch03.htm
Such purists, Marx and Engels were.
Regards, Mike B)
http://happystiletto.blogspot.com/
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