On July 4, 2012, The Guardian on Facebook posted that capitalism is in crisis across the globe––but what on earth is the alternative?
Today, 164 years after Marx and Engels wrote about grave-diggers, the truth is almost the exact opposite. The proletariat, far from burying capitalism, are keeping it on life support. Overworked, underpaid workers ostensibly liberated by the largest socialist revolution in history (China’s) are driven to the brink of suicide to keep those in the west playing with their iPads. Chinese money bankrolls an otherwise bankrupt America.
The irony is scarcely wasted on leading Marxist thinkers. “The domination of capitalism globally depends today on the existence of a Chinese Communist party that gives de-localised capitalist enterprises cheap labour to lower prices and deprive workers of the rights of self-organisation,” says Jacques Rancière, the French marxist thinker and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris VIII. “Happily, it is possible to hope for a world less absurd and more just than today’s.”
That hope, perhaps, explains another improbable truth of our economically catastrophic times – the revival in interest in Marx and Marxist thought. Sales of Das Kapital, Marx’s masterpiece of political economy, have soared ever since 2008, as have those of The Communist Manifesto.
Back in the 1950s, Louis O. Kelso, who eventually became my mentor in binary economics, and Mortimer J. Adler wrote the book The Capitalist Manifesto. Contained therein are the rebuttals to Marx and Engels as written in The Communist Manifesto.
When you read The Capitalist Manifesto, you must be prepared for a shock––particularly if yo are among the millions of Americans who feel complacent about the material well-being that many believe prevails in this country. The Capitalist Manifesto will compel you to examine, re-consider and question many dangerous economic factors and political tendencies you have accepted as inevitable––and will show you how you can do something about them.
The Capitalist Manifesto sets the alarm for ALL American citizens––not simply one group or class. It is for stockholders, workers, labor leaders, corporation executives, investment bankers, taxpayers, small businessmen and businesswomen, and industrialists, statesmen, legislators, judges and educators. Its purpose is to arouse us to the real and present dangers we now face, from the progressive socialization of our economy. What is the difference between a well-heeled existence in a welfare state and the good life in a free society? The Capitalist Manifesto will tell you what that difference is, and why you must be a man or woman of property in order to be a free man or woman. It will explain the meaning of your ever-expanding opportunities for leisure. It will tell you that the goal of an advanced technological society should not be full EMPLOYMENT in the production of wealth, but full ENJOYMENT of the wealth produced. It will tell you you how you, as an individual, can best use wealth to further the happiness and well-being of yourself and your fellow men and woman, and your family and your children.
The Capitalist Manifesto says that we cannot safeguard democracy in this country––or successfully fight communism abroad––unless we, as an advanced technological society, solve our economic problems by means of a CAPITALISTIC distribution of wealth instead of by the socialistic distribution which is becoming every more prevalent in this country. The Capitalist Manifesto calls for a CAPITALIST REVOLUTION to complete the democratic revolution begun by the Declaration of Independence and implemented by our Constitution.
The Capitalist Manifesto provides a revolutionary plan for a CAPITALIST distribution of wealth to preserve our free society.
You can download free The Capitalist Manifesto as well as Kelso and Adler follow-up book The New Capitalists: A Proposal To Free Economic Growth From The Slavery Of [Past] Savings at http://www.cesj.org/cesjsitemap.html. Also on your reading list should be Two-Factor Theory: The Economics Of Reality, which is a prescription for how to turn eighty million workers into capitalists on borrowed money and other proposals. As well, read Democracy And Economic Power: Extending The ESOP Revolution Through Binary Economics. Both books were authored by Louis O. Kelso and Patricia Hetter Kelso.
