one common running theme throughout these ill advised critiques of communism i see everywhere, is a misunderstanding of what ‘wealth’ is, and where it comes from. i seem to remember a short exchange between me and your old kung-fu master, fixed cross, at POD about this.
anything that has ‘economic value’ in a system of modern property relations is appropriated in some way. i’m talking about a system in which people harvest, produce, and trade material goods either through equal exchange or through a monetary medium (with credit or not). we’re not talking about a group of scattered, isolated villages in which people lay claim to a patch of land or a river or a bush.
in this modern system, you total gains either equal exactly what you produce yourself, or the profit you’ve made from exchanging something somebody else made. so all these investors and entrepreneurs you’re talking about fit into one or the other of these options; if one such person involves only his own gains in financing his venture, he’s not a capitalist. if he uses money he’s made from some exchange involving the products of someone else’s labor to finance his venture, he’s lost nothing, and is therefore taking no risk, if he fails. why not? because he’s not putting his own gains, the wealth generated from his own labor, into the venture. the money he’s risking isn’t his because he didn’t produce it… he merely appropriated it. that is, he followed and acted out a privilege given to him by the specific laws of property relations he is involved in.
all this bullshit about ‘omg the responsibility and risk the capitalist has to take, blah blah,’ is just that; bullshit. of course, he might lose money… but nothing he did in the first place generated that money, so he cannot be said to ‘lose’ something that wasn’t his to begin with.
you got me. i didn’t read it. i ‘skimmed’ it though. anyway, i thought it was another one of these ‘omg marxism preaches equality and that’s just crazy!’ posts.
man i’m telling you the number of misunderstandings of marxist theory is so extensive in these forums it’s like walking through a mine field. you can’t even be sure it’s safe to click on a post because the fucking thing might blow your computer up, it’s such nonsense. that’s why i only skimmed it. i was afraid to keep it up for longer than a few seconds. didn’t want my computer to crash.