^^^^^^^^
CB: to be more specific , there must be people who live relatively more miserably because of the level of their income. They must be less comfortable than the rich , for the rich to really feel they are rich. There must be a mass of people who are immiserated or else the status of rich is nothing special.
On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 7:48 AM, Charles Brown <cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:
> At a symbolic level, if there is no mass of poor people, rich people
> are not fully rich. To be rich is to have much more than most other
> people. In other words, being rich is not entirely having an absolute
> amount , but rather having a relative amount, relatively more than
> most. So, in that sense, wealth is all about things not being
> "win-win". There must be winners and mostly losers.
>
> At the level of objective reality, we are in the monopoly capital
> phase of capitalism. The finance capitalists aim to own a certain
> dominant fraction of all wealth in the world, in my opinion. Also,
> one capitalist kills many other capitalists. The logic of the game
> "Monopoly" is the exact logic of the real world at the capitalist
> macro-economic level.
>
>
> https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm
> "As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently decomposed
> the old society from top to bottom, as soon as the labourers are
> turned into proletarians, their means of labour into capital, as soon
> as the capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, then the
> further socialization of labour and further transformation of the land
> and other means of production into socially exploited and, therefore,
> common means of production, as well as the further expropriation of
> private proprietors, takes a new form. That which is now to be
> expropriated is no longer the labourer working for himself, but the
> capitalist exploiting many labourers. This expropriation is
> accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalistic
> production itself, by the centralization of capital. One capitalist
> always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralization, or this
> expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an
> ever-extending scale, the cooperative form of the labour process, the
> conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation
> of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labour into
> instruments of labour only usable in common, the economizing of all
> means of production by their use as means of production of combined,
> socialized labour, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the
> world market, and with this, the international character of the
> capitalistic regime. Along with the constantly diminishing number of
> the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages of
> this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression,
> slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt
> of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and
> disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of
> capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter
> upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along
> with, and under it. Centralization of the means of production and
> socialization of labour at last reach a point where they become
> incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is
> burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The
> expropriators are expropriated."
>
> On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 10:02 AM, charlie herbert <chasherb at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'm mostly not very confident of my grasp of left criticism of the economy
>> and yet am a long time subscriber here, happily gleaning what I can glean.
>>
>> I'm in a conversation right now where I'm being hit with "wealth is not a
>> zero sum game." Because I had a superficial understanding of it at first I
>> did a teeny bit of googling and found it is a major talking point with
>> apologists all over.
>>
>> My point in the conversation is basically that our current system is
>> incredibly exploitative both of natural resources and labor. They repeat
>> the wealth is not a zero sum game. Is this just wrong, a red herring?? any
>> pointers.
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