The new Karl Marx?

[sal paradise]

I received the latest copy of The Nation in the mail yesterday. One article, titled "Show Me The Money," by Walter Mosley, struck me as very powerful. The ideas he embodies are not new or even necessarily unusual, but the language is quite strong. Here is a portion:

"Capitalism, the accrual of wealth from labor, is the religion of America; poverty our cardinal sin. To recognize our position in relation to wealth would be perceived as a confession of wrongdoing, and so we stoically bear up, pretending we are doing all right. And because we don't see ourselves clearly, we have poor health care, no adequate insurance for old age, poisons in our water and our food and the continual nagging fear that things may at any moment fall apart.
Where is the money? It's not in our bank accounts or serving our people. It's not in affordable housing, quality education or the development of sciences that would better the species and the planet. It's not being used for the purpose of global peace.
America is the wealthiest nation in the world, by far, but we the American people are not wealthy. We, most of us, live on the border of poverty. In the distance are towering silvery skyscrapers housing our corporations and our billionaires. But do not be fooled. This skyline does not belong to us. We are not partners in the corporation of America.
The money we make, the wealth we have created, is paradoxically beyond our reach. We live in a separate America. An America that is heated by oil that we may or may not be able to afford; an America that makes profit off of cigarettes, alcohol and imperialist incursions into underprivileged nations; an America that cares more for corporations than it does for its living, breathing citizens.
Where is the money? It has been turned into gold and laid upon our willing backs. We struggle under the weight of the wealth of America, and we are ground down until, in the end, it shall be soaked in our blood."

Does it sound like a manifesto to anyone else?

[Selatius]

1. He sounds like FDR or Martin Luther King, Jr.

FDR never claimed to be socialist anywhere I've heard, but his policies smack of social democracy.

Martin Luther King, however, was a socialist, which is not a very much known fact outside of his campaign to end segregation in America, but he never admitted that in public.

You can't talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can't talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You're really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry.... Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong... with capitalism.... There must be a better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr. (Frogmore, S.C. November 14, 1966. Speech in front of his staff.)

[Captain Hilts]

2. How about this from Lincoln's 2nd State of the Union address -

Abraham Lincoln said in his Second State of the Union address:
Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital producing mutual benefits. The error is in assuming that the whole labor of community exists within that relation.

[Union Thug]

3. YES! Spot on. This is how the message is framed.

This is how our representatives SHOULD be talking.