On 02/10/2014, at 10:24 AM, "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> Joanna: Perhaps in the context of the .1% ruling over the 99.9%...and
> complete ignorance of history, class war can only be understood as a
> "conspiracy."
>
> I think this is misleading. The 1% do NOT in any material way "rule over"
> the population. That is not how capitalism operates. No one ever really
> feels "ruled over." We are perfectly free to starve or freeze in the cold.
> No one forces us to work or to trust Obama or Elizabeth Warren. We are
> quite free except as we are 'ruled" not by other humans but by "the future,:
I call bullshit.
This is playing with words. That is precisely how the capitalist class operate (no need, here, to refer to it euphemistically as "The 1%", as only grown-ups are on this e-mail list), they rule over the working class *materially*. The freedom to starve in the cold is no freedom at all and so we are indeed forced to work for them and to obey them. The employer, in his workplace is an absolute dictator. These employers are indeed, contrary to Carroll's attempt to play with words, other humans and we are ruled by them.
It may be more poetic to waffle on about being ruled over by "the future", but I am not a poetic sort, but a simple and practical sort. I have little patience for arty-farty poetic twaddle that would try to mystify what is a perfectly simple and easily understood social arrangement.
Bullshit I say to that.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas