Pelosi and Marx on Freedom
WaveCameCrashin
Posts: 2,929
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/ ... eedom.html
March 15, 2010
Pelosi and Marx on 'Freedom'
By Ed Kaitz
Nancy Pelosi wants to give birth to a new kind of freedom in America -- the freedom from being "job-locked."
In an interview with Rachel Maddow Thursday evening, Pelosi asked Americans to "think" about a bright, new, liberating kind of utopia:
Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer, a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance. Or that people could start a business and be entrepreneurial and take risks, but not be job-locked because a child has a child has asthma or diabetes or someone in the family is bipolar. You name it, any condition is job-locking.
Maddow was so overwhelmed and smitten with Pelosi's remarks that she posted the interview on her website under the following title: "Finally! Pelosi frames health reform for the win. (Hint: It's about freedom.)"
The problem with Pelosi's remarks, however, is that from hindsight, they are not bright, new, or liberating. On the contrary, almost identical words were penned over a hundred years ago by another champion of economic "freedom": Karl Marx. Marx criticized the private economy because it led to the "renunciation of life and of human needs."
Like Pelosi, Marx was deeply troubled by an economic system that left most people job-locked and unable to satisfy their "human need" to become more authentic. In other words, the more you have to work, said Marx, "the less you eat, drink, buy books, go to the theater or to balls, or to the public house, and the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc."
Marx chastised the middle class in England for being "so incurably debased by self-interest" and thirsty for a "quick profit" that they were incapable of recognizing the alienation from their true selves. Communist society, then, was the cure that could liberate us from our false selves and usher in a new kind of creativity and authenticity. Says Marx:
[C]ommunist society ... regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, as the spirit moves me ..."
This kind of sheer lunacy could have been hatched only by an unemployed academic and journalist like Marx, who, by the way, was supported financially in his authentically job-liberated struggle against capitalism by his wealthy colleague Friedrich Engels. What's most disturbing is the number of wild-eyed crusaders, both then and now, who have fallen for Marx's creative definition of "freedom."
As for that nagging issue of just how "communist society" will "regulate the general production" after the socialist revolution, Engels had this to say:
The community will have to calculate what it can produce with the means at its disposal; and in accordance with the relationship of this productive power to the mass of consumers it will determine how far it has to raise or lower production.
In other words, leave it to the "community" (government) to worry about levels of production and consumption in order for the newly liberated and formerly "job-locked" citizens to pursue their lifelong dreams of being artists, writers, or photographers.
Friedrich Hayek wrote about this subtle shift in the word "freedom" over sixty years ago. He argued that as socialists began coming under fire for promoting servitude and control, they made the creative decision to harness to their "cart the strongest of all political motives -- the craving for freedom." For Hayek,
The subtle change in meaning to which the word ‘freedom' was subjected in order that this argument sound plausible is important. To the great apostles of political freedom the word had meant freedom from coercion, freedom from the arbitrary power of other men, release from the ties which left the individual no choice but obedience to the orders of a superior to whom he was attached.
For the socialists, however, "before man could be truly free, the 'despotism of physical want' had to be broken, the ‘restraints of the economic system' relaxed." For Hayek, this new definition of freedom was simply "another name for the old demand for an equal distribution of wealth."
Hayek asks a fascinating question that each and every American needs to consider before deciding whether to return any Obamacare-supporting politician to power this fall:
Who can seriously doubt ... that the power which a multi-millionaire, who may be my neighbor and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest [bureaucrat] possess who wields the coercive power of the state and on whose discretion it depends whether and how I am to be allowed to live or to work?
Nancy Pelosi's theory of "economic freedom," you see, requires legions of new bureaucrats wielding the power of the state so that you can be liberated from your inauthentic, job-locked selves. If we take freedom in its true meaning -- as freedom from coercion -- we see instantly, however, that indeed, I am less coerced by a neighboring millionaire than by the tiniest government bureaucrat deciding where and when I can see a doctor, go to school, or become job-locked.
Years ago, before he died, I asked my father what he liked most about working in the home-building industry. After having been "job-locked" in the housing industry for over twenty years, he told me the following: "For me, the best thing of all is seeing a new family move into one of our homes."
My father wasn't a writer or an artist, but he was a kind, decent, hardworking man who loved his job and his family. Rather than struggle against the system and neglect his children like Marx did, my father felt it was part of his job, not the government's, to take care of his family -- including our health care.
Sounds pretty authentic to me.
spot on...
March 15, 2010
Pelosi and Marx on 'Freedom'
By Ed Kaitz
Nancy Pelosi wants to give birth to a new kind of freedom in America -- the freedom from being "job-locked."
In an interview with Rachel Maddow Thursday evening, Pelosi asked Americans to "think" about a bright, new, liberating kind of utopia:
Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer, a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance. Or that people could start a business and be entrepreneurial and take risks, but not be job-locked because a child has a child has asthma or diabetes or someone in the family is bipolar. You name it, any condition is job-locking.
Maddow was so overwhelmed and smitten with Pelosi's remarks that she posted the interview on her website under the following title: "Finally! Pelosi frames health reform for the win. (Hint: It's about freedom.)"
The problem with Pelosi's remarks, however, is that from hindsight, they are not bright, new, or liberating. On the contrary, almost identical words were penned over a hundred years ago by another champion of economic "freedom": Karl Marx. Marx criticized the private economy because it led to the "renunciation of life and of human needs."
Like Pelosi, Marx was deeply troubled by an economic system that left most people job-locked and unable to satisfy their "human need" to become more authentic. In other words, the more you have to work, said Marx, "the less you eat, drink, buy books, go to the theater or to balls, or to the public house, and the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc."
Marx chastised the middle class in England for being "so incurably debased by self-interest" and thirsty for a "quick profit" that they were incapable of recognizing the alienation from their true selves. Communist society, then, was the cure that could liberate us from our false selves and usher in a new kind of creativity and authenticity. Says Marx:
[C]ommunist society ... regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, as the spirit moves me ..."
This kind of sheer lunacy could have been hatched only by an unemployed academic and journalist like Marx, who, by the way, was supported financially in his authentically job-liberated struggle against capitalism by his wealthy colleague Friedrich Engels. What's most disturbing is the number of wild-eyed crusaders, both then and now, who have fallen for Marx's creative definition of "freedom."
As for that nagging issue of just how "communist society" will "regulate the general production" after the socialist revolution, Engels had this to say:
The community will have to calculate what it can produce with the means at its disposal; and in accordance with the relationship of this productive power to the mass of consumers it will determine how far it has to raise or lower production.
In other words, leave it to the "community" (government) to worry about levels of production and consumption in order for the newly liberated and formerly "job-locked" citizens to pursue their lifelong dreams of being artists, writers, or photographers.
Friedrich Hayek wrote about this subtle shift in the word "freedom" over sixty years ago. He argued that as socialists began coming under fire for promoting servitude and control, they made the creative decision to harness to their "cart the strongest of all political motives -- the craving for freedom." For Hayek,
The subtle change in meaning to which the word ‘freedom' was subjected in order that this argument sound plausible is important. To the great apostles of political freedom the word had meant freedom from coercion, freedom from the arbitrary power of other men, release from the ties which left the individual no choice but obedience to the orders of a superior to whom he was attached.
For the socialists, however, "before man could be truly free, the 'despotism of physical want' had to be broken, the ‘restraints of the economic system' relaxed." For Hayek, this new definition of freedom was simply "another name for the old demand for an equal distribution of wealth."
Hayek asks a fascinating question that each and every American needs to consider before deciding whether to return any Obamacare-supporting politician to power this fall:
Who can seriously doubt ... that the power which a multi-millionaire, who may be my neighbor and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest [bureaucrat] possess who wields the coercive power of the state and on whose discretion it depends whether and how I am to be allowed to live or to work?
Nancy Pelosi's theory of "economic freedom," you see, requires legions of new bureaucrats wielding the power of the state so that you can be liberated from your inauthentic, job-locked selves. If we take freedom in its true meaning -- as freedom from coercion -- we see instantly, however, that indeed, I am less coerced by a neighboring millionaire than by the tiniest government bureaucrat deciding where and when I can see a doctor, go to school, or become job-locked.
Years ago, before he died, I asked my father what he liked most about working in the home-building industry. After having been "job-locked" in the housing industry for over twenty years, he told me the following: "For me, the best thing of all is seeing a new family move into one of our homes."
My father wasn't a writer or an artist, but he was a kind, decent, hardworking man who loved his job and his family. Rather than struggle against the system and neglect his children like Marx did, my father felt it was part of his job, not the government's, to take care of his family -- including our health care.
Sounds pretty authentic to me.
spot on...
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
Secondly, I think people are insane if they believe these two people believe or attempt to bring about the same types of things in a serious regard.
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
You might be right about Her not being as theoretical as Marx but she doesn't need to be and Pelosi is no dumb ass. kooky yes,but I think she knows exactly what she is doing.
Then you better wake the hell up dude because it's already happening.
Look at all the things that are being Nationalized by the gov.
Banks
Car companies
Student Loans
Gov run Insurance
Just look at all the radicals and organizations that Obama surrounded himself with before he became president.
William Ayers,Marilyn Katz, Frank Marshall Davis, Alice Palmer, George Soros, Jim Johnson, Franklin Raines, Carl Davidson, Robert Blackwell, Tony Rezko, Dorothy Tillman, Robert Malley, Cornel West, Howard Dean, Donna Brazille, Nancy Pelosi, MoveOn.org, Center for American Progress, Open Society Institute, Arab American Action Network, The Democracy Alliance, The New Party, the Democratic Socialist Party, The Working Families Party, Socialist Scholars Conference, Campaign for America’s Future, The Progressive Caucus, Public Allies, ACORN, Citizens Services, Inc., Ken Rolling, The Woods Fund, The Chicago Annenberg Challenge, The Joyce Foundation, Gamaliel Foundation, Students For A Democratic Society, Saul Alinsky, Richard Andrew Cloward, Frances Fox Piven, Zbigniew Brzenzinski, Penny Pritzker, The Superior Bank, The Broadway Bank, Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, Reverend Wright, Rather Pfleuger, Raila Odinga of Kenya,
http://logisticsmonster.com/2008/10/19/ ... he-making/
oh my...where to start...
as for your list of Nationalized things...
Banks and Car companies...please give me an alternative...what should have been done...?
Student Loans were run by the Gov't until they where privatized for profit...now they are back to being run by the Gov't...big deal...
and this Gov't run insurance...where oh where is that...?
I think you've been drinking the coo-coo koolaid...and that stuff is no good...
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
Rather than reading an article on some Republican website, why don't you try reading Marx instead? Or would you find that too much of a challenge?
Im not the one drinking Kool-aid... Like I said if you can't see what the hell is going on I hope one day you do for your sake.
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
good luck with this ...
Even if you don't agree with many of the issues and policies our government has passed, none come close to actually being "communist". So perhaps you ought to think about that before throwing terms around you clearly are misreading and misinterpreting.
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
Wow! Ronald Reagan! What a genius!
good post friend...
They want to play word games here because that’s all they got......notice no one has said a word about all Obama’s buddies....they just keep following.......
“I now have absolute proof that smoking even one marijuana cigarette is equal in brain damage to being on Bikini Island during an H-bomb blast.” Ronald Reagan
What do you call someone who neither reads nor understands Marx and Lenin?
.... ?
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Ronal ... an_iF.html
In the 1980s, U.S.-backed forces committed widespread massacres, political murders and torture. Tens of thousands of civilians died. Many of the dead were children. Soldiers routinely raped women before executing them.
There can be no doubt, too, that President Reagan was an avid supporter of the implicated military forces, that he supplied them with weapons and that he actively sought to discredit human rights investigators and journalists who exposed the crimes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan_adm ... n_scandals
The presidency of Ronald Reagan in the United States was marked by multiple scandals, resulting in the investigation, indictment, or conviction of 138 administration officials, the largest number for any president to date.[1] The most well known of these scandals, the Iran-Contra affair, involved a plan whereby weapons were sold to Iran and the profits diverted to fund the Nicaraguan Contras, in violation of U.S. and international law.
The HUD rigging scandal consisted of Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Samuel Pierce and his associates rigging low income housing bids to favor Republican contributors to Reagan's campaign as well as rewarding Republican lobbyists such as James G. Watt a former Secretary of the Interior. [2] Sixteen convictions were eventually handed down.[3]
In the Sewergate scandal, officials at the EPA were found guilty of using money from Superfund to enhance the election prospects of local politicians aligned with the administration.
The Lobbying scandal involved Reagan's Chief of Staff Michael Deaver and Reagan's Press Secretary Lyn Nofziger both being charged with lobbying improprieties.
The EPA scandal occurred when the head of the EPA Rita Lavelle was found in Contempt of Congress and her assistant Rita Lavelle was convicted of perjury. It involving channeling of EPA funds to projects which aided local Republican politicans.
The Inslaw Affair involved Deputy Attorney General D. Lowell Jensen and C. Madison Brewer both being held in Contempt of Congress for alleged theft of software and services from the Inslaw Corporation.
Savings and loan crisis in which 747 institutions failed and had to be rescued with $160,000,000,000 of taxpayer monies.
We are saying it's heading that way...it's starting
Look I will not argue Marxism, socialist, communist anymore......We all know the meanings....screw all the technical differences....you all need to check out a few of the organizations and buddies Obama has been involved with and lets discuss those people....old saying is “ you will be judged by the company you keep”....
I do not agree with most of the things this administration has done, but saying things which aren't true or factual to discredit them is mere slander and gives you no leg to stand on. You may as well just post "Obama is smelly".
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Nice response. You're really doing yourself proud.
Ronald Reagan was a criminal. He was responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands, including the murder of children and the raping of nuns. He was responsible for the U.S being convicted by the World Court for the crime of international terrorism for it's conduct in Nicaragua. He was also the most corrupt U.S President to date. He was responsible for selling weapons to Iran in order to fund death squads in Latin America.
Just a bunch of bla bla bla though, right?
Clearly he's a hero of yours.
and I would call you a blank blank
Ive read enough to know what i need to know. The man was a miscreant and a Depressed insomniac who hated the middle class and the working class for that matter. He wanted the Gov to control everything.
Oh I forgot he was also an amoral relativist and secular humanist also
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Lastly and let me be clear, unless you woke up yesterday, these things have been going on for decades in our nation. To out of the blue demonize Obama any more than anyone before him is mere biased partisan politics or smear tactices because your political leaning isn't winning. If you're so intrigued by the company government keeps and involves themselves with or any of the ongoing issues we see in government, perhaps studying and learning more about the issues and what causes them compared to simply pointing the finger at the latest version of it in government and our system.
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
Here he admits it.
I'll give you that ,but I believe Obama is an Overdrive and he is intentionally trying to bring this country down and transform it into something we are not.