The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #81182   Message #1487908
Posted By: Piers
19-May-05 - 05:04 AM
Thread Name: Did Marx Say this?
Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
Robomatic,
Marx used the terms socialism and communism interchangeably, and it is his definition of capitalism (bourgeois society), socialism and communism that I'm sticking to. The liberal apologists for capitalism who try to usurp the word have got it wrong. The idea that common ownership, democratic control and free access to goods and services can exist alongside minority ownership, minority control and 'can't pay, can't have' is ridiculous. Social programmes, welfare state and the national health service and education are part of the system based on wage labour and capital, are paid for in wealth produced by wage labour, are provided by wage labourers and controlled by a - often unelected bureaucrats - on a basis 'value for money' not need.

E. O. Wilson is a renowned expert on ants.

Indeed he his, and he should of stuck to that rather than translating his studies to human society. He rebranded discredited social darwinism as sociobiology to serve as the same prop to the ruling minority as other forms of biological determinism.

As for Rolls Royces, in the social context that folk will make decisions in socialism (given the human labour required to produce a Rolls Royce and extract oil and climate change) I don't imagine anyone could really argue that they needed a Rolls Royce for their personal use. In capitalism, we have people that actively encourage it: wants are created by a enormous advertising industry.