I watched a youtube video recently that suggested that Karl Marx was correct that there's class warfare going on, but it isn't between the workers and the property owners, it's between the people who go out and find their power in helping others (including the workers and the factory owners) and the people who find their power in oppressing others (largely the government)
By the time he was done explaining his thesis in the very beginning I found I couldn't disagree with the concept at all. It is true that sometimes the rich screw over the little guy, but it's also true that sometimes the rich make the workers rich too. One of the big differences ends up being whether the property owner has the backing of government to corruptly get monopoly powers they don't deserve.
Looking at class struggle through such a lens seems to me to shift the perspective to one that makes a lot more sense. A small business owner who is barely making it isn't trying to screw over their employees (even though they might), they're struggling too. On the other hand, people with either direct institutional power or who have been granted institutional power in one form or another by the bureaucratic class often aren't struggling economically because the game is rigged in their favor.
Looking at things from this perspective also explains what happens in regimes that adopt marxism. In having an ideological blindspot about the dangers of people who don't have direct wealth but do have bureaucratic power, it allows those people to run amok because at least they aren't the ideologically selected scapegoat. In that sense, marxism shares properties with national socialism, which pointed at one race of people to pin all the troubles of the world on and in the process let a bunch of really nasty people get bureaucratic power.
If there are 3 ways to get something done that are hard and 1 way that is easy, everyone will use the easy way even if it's the wrong way to do it or if it's only meant for fringe situations. Therefore you will want to make sure you're propery administering your systems to eliminate shortcuts and workarounds that will disregard all the work you put into regulating what are supposed to be the main ways to get things done. On the other hand, it also means you want to make sure those main pathways to getting things done are reasonably streamlined so people aren't incentivized to taking shortcuts.
By the time he was done explaining his thesis in the very beginning I found I couldn't disagree with the concept at all. It is true that sometimes the rich screw over the little guy, but it's also true that sometimes the rich make the workers rich too. One of the big differences ends up being whether the property owner has the backing of government to corruptly get monopoly powers they don't deserve.
Looking at class struggle through such a lens seems to me to shift the perspective to one that makes a lot more sense. A small business owner who is barely making it isn't trying to screw over their employees (even though they might), they're struggling too. On the other hand, people with either direct institutional power or who have been granted institutional power in one form or another by the bureaucratic class often aren't struggling economically because the game is rigged in their favor.
Looking at things from this perspective also explains what happens in regimes that adopt marxism. In having an ideological blindspot about the dangers of people who don't have direct wealth but do have bureaucratic power, it allows those people to run amok because at least they aren't the ideologically selected scapegoat. In that sense, marxism shares properties with national socialism, which pointed at one race of people to pin all the troubles of the world on and in the process let a bunch of really nasty people get bureaucratic power.
If there are 3 ways to get something done that are hard and 1 way that is easy, everyone will use the easy way even if it's the wrong way to do it or if it's only meant for fringe situations. Therefore you will want to make sure you're propery administering your systems to eliminate shortcuts and workarounds that will disregard all the work you put into regulating what are supposed to be the main ways to get things done. On the other hand, it also means you want to make sure those main pathways to getting things done are reasonably streamlined so people aren't incentivized to taking shortcuts.
- replies
- 2
- announces
- 4
- likes
- 8