QUICK TAKE ON MICKEY MARX

I posted this today on THE EDUCATED IMAGINATION:


I have a simple motto as regards all political systems:

"Any political system will work if its people do."

By which I mean not every single person in a society but those responsible for shaping it.



I disagree with Marx's claim that capitalism is inherently flawed. Like any system it works well as long as it gets proper maintenance. Our financial troubles result from an oligarchy within capitalism, not capitalism itself. The oligarchy has campaigned for the last thirty years to remove all regulatory controls in the short-sighted belief that they could keep all their capital to themselves because they were "job creators," i.e. the new aristocracy.



Did they plunder the middle class? Yes, without a doubt. But in a capitalistic democracy it was at least theoretically possible that the oligarchy could have been defeated. That they were not speaks to the lack of will on the part of that perhaps overly-comfortable middle class (to which, sadly, I'm no exception).



I understand why Northrop Frye would recognize Marx's sterling ability to see new mythic shapes in socioeconomic developments, but I would think he'd be put off by Marx's extreme utilitarianism.