In our capitalistic society the 'immense majority' stands by as the rich get richer and poor get poorer.
"The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between labourers."
The proletariat fight for jobs and commodities that the bourgeoisie allocate. Are resources really scarce in the United States/the world or are they just unequally distributed?
"At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeoisie. Thus the whole historical movement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie."
Brand name rivals come to mind and the car industry. People on assembly lines work harder to out produce, out sell, and out rank their rivals. In the long run, who really benefits? Who is exploited. Stock piles of cars currently sit wasting away because they will not sell.
What I find most interesting about the document is not the advice given, but the well thought out responses to criticism. As soon as anyone mentions Marx in the public sphere unruly communism seems to be a common association.
He addresses concerns that communism will eliminate religion, morality, laws, bourgeois marriage, bourgeois family, etc. I laughed at the idea that: "But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the whole bourgeoisie in chorus." This is an argument against communism I've never heard before, but obviously Marx had a counter to it.
I'll expand on this more later. It's hard to know where to start with so many ideas.
I'm glad you brought up the association with the overstock of vehicles. Being from Michigan, I personally have known families whose lives have been impacted by the auto industry for years, and now, Michigan is among the most economically distressed states in the nation because of this over-production. I guess it all makes me think of the relative surplus discussion of capitalistic accumulation and how the demise of capital really seems immenent based solely on the constant capital in hyper produciton. Talk about the "dead weight of pauperism", nothing shows it better than these half-ton hunks of shiny metal just sitting there wasting away. And here we sit with car dealers offering buy one get half off.. If I could afford a new car, this would be a great time to buy one! I'm glad you linked the pictures and brought it up.
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