Monday, May 04, 2009

The true face of the bourgeoisie

Kevin of Kontent News summarizes Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America [pdf]:
Over the last decade, Wall Street (i.e. the entire financial sector consisting of commercial banks, accounting firms, insurance companies, securities firms including hedge funds and private equity firms) showered Washington with over $1.738 billion in supposed ‘campaign contributions’ and another $3.441 billion on 2,996 officially registered lobbyists (more than five for each Member of Congress) whose job it was to press for deregulation. In return for the investment of this $5.179 billion, the Money Industry was able to get rid of many of the reforms enacted after the Great Depression and to operate, for most of the last ten years, without any effective rules or restraints whatsoever.

The title overstates the case: Wall Street and Washington did not betray the American people: betrayal presumes an obligation, an obligation which existed only as a fantasy in the population at large, a fantasy no more or less vacuous than our millennial belief in gods. We know from before Marx that the bourgeoisie — indeed every ruling class — is eternally hostile to the masses: their deception is justified as a ruse de guerre; "All's fair," as the saying goes, "in love and war."

President Obama will not — indeed he cannot — restore the standard of living afforded the American masses, even that portion grudgingly allocated the masses directly from the pockets of the bourgeoisie (much less that stolen by naked force of imperialist domination). The horse has bolted; it's too late to lock the barn door with more stringent regulation of the financial industry.

The spoils have already been taken, but now they must be allocated to one or another faction within the bourgeoisie. Obama's job (as would have been McCain's or Clinton's job) is to allocate the spoils to the faction that supports him. By his actions and explicit statements, this is precisely what he is doing.

Do not expect pity or mercy from the bourgeoisie in the coming years. Expect only empty "Hope and Change" rhetoric to distract and confuse the masses — you and me — as we are reduced to little more than slavery.

1 comment:

  1. They are not the only ones fleecing the sheeple.

    This is huge!

    http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/religionandtheology/1374/the_ponzi_prosperity_gospel/

    ReplyDelete

Please pick a handle or moniker for your comment. It's much easier to address someone by a name or pseudonym than simply "hey you". I have the option of requiring a "hard" identity, but I don't want to turn that on... yet.

With few exceptions, I will not respond or reply to anonymous comments, and I may delete them. I keep a copy of all comments; if you want the text of your comment to repost with something vaguely resembling an identity, email me.

No spam, pr0n, commercial advertising, insanity, lies, repetition or off-topic comments. Creationists, Global Warming deniers, anti-vaxers, Randians, and Libertarians are automatically presumed to be idiots; Christians and Muslims might get the benefit of the doubt, if I'm in a good mood.

See the Debate Flowchart for some basic rules.

Sourced factual corrections are always published and acknowledged.

I will respond or not respond to comments as the mood takes me. See my latest comment policy for details. I am not a pseudonomous-American: my real name is Larry.

Comments may be moderated from time to time. When I do moderate comments, anonymous comments are far more likely to be rejected.

I've already answered some typical comments.

I have jqMath enabled for the blog. If you have a dollar sign (\$) in your comment, put a \\ in front of it: \\\$, unless you want to include a formula in your comment.

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.