[lbo-talk] Will Mitt Romney's 47% remark sink his campaign?

[c b]

THE RICH ARE INDUSTRIOUS; THAT'S HOW THEY GOT RICH; THE POOR, THE 47%,
ARE LAZY (SMILES) :This primitive accumulation plays in Political
Economy about the same part as original sin in theology. Adam bit the
apple, and thereupon sin fell on the human race. Its origin is
supposed to be explained when it is told as an anecdote of the past.
In times long gone by there were two sorts of people; one, the
diligent, intelligent, and, above all, frugal elite; the other, lazy
rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living. The
legend of theological original sin tells us certainly how man came to
be condemned to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow; but the
history of economic original sin reveals to us that there are people
to whom this is by no means essential. Never mind! Thus it came to
pass that the former sort accumulated wealth, and the latter sort had
at last nothing to sell except their own skins. And from this original
sin dates the poverty of the great majority that, despite all its
labour, has up to now nothing to sell but itself, and the wealth of
the few that increases constantly although they have long ceased to
work. Such insipid childishness is every day preached to us in the
defence of property. M. Thiers, e.g., had the assurance to repeat it
with all the solemnity of a statesman to the French people, once so
spirituel. But as soon as the question of property crops up, it
becomes a sacred duty to proclaim the intellectual food of the infant
as the one thing fit for all ages and for all stages of development.
In actual history it is notorious that conquest, enslavement, robbery,
murder, briefly force, play the great part. In the tender annals of
Political Economy, the idyllic reigns from time immemorial. Right and
“labour” were from all time the sole means of enrichment, the present
year of course always excepted. As a matter of fact, the methods of
primitive accumulation are anything but idyllic

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