Surprise! Key Obama Administration Official Quotes Marx, Speaks of Efficacy of Collectivism

Monday, May 07, 2012

Doug Ross:

I'm sure he just forgot about the part where 95 million people had to pay the ultimate price for Marx's insane, unworkable and despotic policies.

A senior Obama administration official defended the efficacy of “class warfare” on his personal blog Monday by quoting the political philosopher and communist theorist Karl Marx.

Rick Bookstaber, who currently serves on the Financial Stability Oversight Council, the federal body established under the Dodd-Frank Act to “ensure the stability of our nation’s financial system,” took issue with conservative commentator Tucker Carlson’s accusations that liberals were engaging in “class warfare” by seeking to blame the nation’s fiscal problems on a small number of wealthy individuals.

"There is little that matches the artfulness of the rich in waving off criticism of the widening income gap as ‘class warfare,’” Bookstaber wrote. “...I believe such a war is justifiable, and indeed ultimately inevitable.”

Bookstaber explained further, citing Marx:

During the industrial revolution class warfare centered on the length of the working day. A tightly defined working day only appeared with the advent of the industrial revolution... regimentation and a dependable workforce became necessary once there was machinery to run and capital invested, and so with industrialization came the an enforced workday. So it is not surprising that Marx stated the central battle of class warfare at the time in terms of the working day:

The capitalist maintains his rights as a purchaser when he tries to make the working-day as long as possible, and to make, whenever possible, two working-days out of one. On the other hand, the peculiar nature of the commodity sold implies a limit to its consumption by the purchaser, and the laborer maintains his right as seller when he wishes to reduce the working-day to one of definite normal duration. There is here, therefore, an antinomy, right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchanges. Between equal rights force decides. Hence is it that in the history of capitalist production, the determination of what is a working-day, presents itself as the result of a struggle, a struggle between collective capital, i.e., the class of capitalists, and collective labour, i.e., the working-class. – Marx, Das Kapital

Marx’s work was widely appropriated throughout the 20th century by countries such as China and the former Soviet Union. Tens of millions of people were slaughtered under those regimes.

But they just didn't implement Marx's policies correctly, right Bookstaber?

And I'm sure all of the following incidents -- demonstrating Obama's seeming affinity for socialism -- are, eh, simply coincidences:

• "That was fast: Giddy Obama invites new French Socialist BFF to the White House"

• Would-be Obama Czar Van Jones turns out to be a Communist Truther

• Ex-White House Communications Czar Anita Dunn is a devotee of the mass-murderer Mao

How many more radical leftists like Bookstaber are lurking in this administration, burrowed deeply to influence policy in spite of election results, in spite of the will of the people, and operating counter to American history, traditions and values?

But there is one balm: November is coming. And we are going to turn these bums out and flick the lights on in the halls of power. And then we will watch these cockroaches head for the hills.


Hat tip: BadBlue.com.