QUOTAT!ON MARX: VOLUME ONE.

“The rate of surplus-value is therefore an exact expression for the degree of exploitation of labour-power by capital, or of the worker by the capitalist.”

Karl Marx.

Capital, Vol I.

Pg. 326; Penguin.

In other words, it’s not uncommon for contemporary leeches to speak of the role of the corporation as this alone: to make money. It is not the business of business (as usual) to provide goods and services for people, much less to concern themselves with the quality of the goods and services which they happen to produce. They are a machine of exploitation; their profits are theft.

Rand attempts to romanticize this process by contesting that ONLY the capitalist produces goods and services, by avenue of industry. Yet this ironically authoritarian variation on what passes for libertarianism does more than to express a narcissist’s dismissive contempt for those whom she depends upon. The capitalist effectively produces NOTHING for society that is of any use to society; he lives to one-up his fellows in the context of an arbitrary social system he (in many previous lifetimes, if we might romanticize his tradition) created. Workers create goods and services; they are simply stimulated by capitalism in the manner that slaves fear the whip, though they forget their slavery to the extent that they are afforded chains of gold. (I wish that this were hyperbolic, but there are literally celebrities who are both descendants of slavery and proud owners of golden chains. The irony and hidden meaning of their neurosis is lost on them, apparently.)

Marx had no way of knowing the extent to which dictators would take advantage of human altruism in the twentieth century, but were he around today I doubt that he would side with the Republicans. Instead, he would probably criticize the communists for their failures, citing the same authoritarianism in those States that he perceived in the capitalist system, arguing, as I have, that the capitalists sabotaged the project repeatedly.

My contention is that people allow themselves to be taken advantage of so long as they are compensated for it at the expense of their own conscientiousness; in the absence of a system of monetary incentives, it is not that people grow lazy, but it is rather their heightened sense of community and work ethic which makes them more susceptible to propaganda and manipulation by the few individuals who are so depraved as to take advantage of kindness. But all that makes capitalism appear preferable is that those kind souls which are likewise oppressed under capitalism are pathetically few.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]