Yes. Which isn't unusual
I am not targeting you, but the whole of societies who create and sustain “class” divisions, which are artificial by their very created existance.
I do not think you are - you are 'targeting' an ideological viewpoint you disagree with (as you expand on later - but given I had already pointed this out to you, there was no need) . I note though you simply ignore the bits you find more uncomfortable to argue with and simply try to fit your mistaken pre-conceptions as to what marxism actually represents as a set of ideas. I will give a couple of examples of this:
I don't give any view of how individuals look at themselves.
neither do i
Marx had an utopist's view on the ideal society (haven't we all). I don't believe in “all power to the Worker” for the simple – obvious - reason that both investor and worker are interdependent if any of them wants to profit – hence make a living – out of anything. Hence the artificiality of any “class” divisions. There is no other class than the class of humanity.
I can understand that the marxist viewpoint would be a threat to your religious views which try to find some overarching thing to unite 'humanity'. In this sense your viewpoint has much in common with for example nationalist views, racialist views and all of those excuse used to legitimise everything from slavery to the enforced covering of women.
What marx did was expose the underlying reasons as opposed to the ideological excuses put forward by those in control. You would not be the first to find this uncomfortable.
Like others before and after him, Marx argued against exploitation of the poor and had in his time and age reason enough to do so, yet this exploitation was not a new element in human society. It only appeared under a shape and form more apparent and directly visible due to the factor “industrialism”. Which indeed disturbed known patterns and led to uncontrolled up to uncontrollable urbanization. Not a new element in the scope of human history either; but so it was in Western eyes and experience.
It is almost inevitable that you try to bring in the concept of 'western bias' (again this is a common 'excuse me') but, just as marx did not limit his own developing view of class society to the period he was living in, neither did the resulting view of how class society develops (and class relations change as the mode of production changes) limit itself to 'western societies'. You may like to delude yourself that the non-western world is outside of this but that would leave you unable to explain how those societies have themselves developed and changed. The marxist analysis was not just a snapshot of one society at one moment but an attempt to understand how change occurs - what the underlying contradictions were that resulted in change in any human societies. That is not to say marx himself was able to cover every area of the world and every historical moment (he only had he one life after all...) but he provided a set of tools that could and have been used to explore the specifics he himself did not cover.
How on earth can you claim that your boss “steals” your labor if you get paid for it?
the boss steals by only paying you a percentage of your labour value back to you. this is called profit (ie once material costs have been taken out). This is specific to the class relations of capitalist society
You object to an investor making profit while you need his investments to have a job.
where did that investor's wealth come from in the first place. as you said earlier - 'more carefully read human history'. when did that investor's wealth belong to that 'investor'? is this a natural thing or is this something that is the result of imposition?
You freely call any profit made by your investor “stealing” yet if a firm goes bankrupt, employees are very quick to claim...
it is common for 'investors' to underinvest I see not problem in workers pointing this out - this does not make a marxist explaination of the underlying reasons why the nature of private property leaves the investor's workforce - thier lives, families and futures - dictated to by the whims of capitalist contradictions any less relevant. The questions that arises is - do that workforce need to live with these contradictions? You assumption seems to be that they should be grateful to these 'investors' - so how did humanity survive prior to the arrival of these 'investors'? or are you going to tell me this has always been so?
Investors all must look at their investment as if they give away their money to charity and hence not expect any return but the joy to give employees a paidjob. .
And following your 'logic' (which closely mimics that of the dominant ideology at the present time - the neo liberals who are presently forcing billions into poverty by forcing them to toe the international capitalist line) - you are arguing that the tiny minority of 'investors' should be kow-towed to by the vast majority.
The parasitical relationship for me is that it is the vast majority that CREATE THE WEALTH - not those investors - so it is the investors who are surplus to requirements
Then first apply the reasoning that there is no such thing as “class” but in the minds of those who like to think there is, for whatever reason. On the other hand, “equality” if measured in terms of social, financial, personal success is an utopy. We are all born humans, yet we are not all the same, nor are our circumstances of birth or the opportunities we get in life, if we manage (or want) to exploit them or not. Humans aren't robots.
The reason for the development of a view of class society was an explaination of presicely why the other conditions you have just mentioned existed.
Unlike you - who seems to prefer deciding on a pre-conceived theory BEFORE looking at the concrete reality. Marx, and plenty of other folk looked at the reality and then drew their developing theories from this. Why don't you first look at the reality - something you seem to be vaguely aware of - and then answer the question does class division exist or not? Rather than trying to enforce your presumptions onto me. There is a reason why marxists talk about class and it honestly was not drawn out of a hat or decided in advance by reading some book written in the middle ages...
I imagine this would reflect your own utopian religious ideology - where you tend to try and make reality fit the words from a book written in the middle ages.
Far from believing that 'everybody is the same' as you try to imply - marxists point out that class society destroys individual development and achievement. The truly 'individual' individual is held back by class society
Weirdly the only way you have of defending your pre-conceptions is to use the arguements of those in power at present
You simply overlook all the various contributing factors to poverty and deprivation. Of course governments (local or other powers) are often enough part of the problem but so is history, geography, demography and what not. It is beyond oversimplification to label all people who are victim of such intertwining factors as “working class”, just because they are deprived of what is looked at as of highest importance in Western Consumerist societies.
No YOU are the one who simply does not question what that poverty and deprivation is a result of. Or are you accepting that the non-western world was unable to develop economically due to a lack of raw materials, knowledge or 'investors'?? If so - weird for someone who tries the old 'looking through western eyes' excuse early on in his 'expose' of the 'limits' of the idea of class.
There are a couple of excellent books by a bloke called Jared Diamond - 'Guns, Germs and Steel' and Collapse - How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive'. Now I do not know if this author claims to be a marxist or not - probably not. He more than covers the questions that arise - why some societies 'developed' and others did not?
I am confident in saying that the 'oversimplifications' are entirely yours. I did not for one moment look at working class 'deprevation' in the majority of the world through some 'western consumerist' set of values. I think that people being underfed, starving, working in intolerable conditions etc etc are concrete indicators of class inequality. I am fully aware of the 'relative' wealth of the western working class. Marxist explainations can give better reasons why this is than any middle ages religious tome (I keep coming back to this in the hope you will react to the point and in so doing be more honest as too your real opposition to a marxist idea of class).
I think that asking people to prey for their salvation may have made sense if thousands of years of human existence had not proven the 'getting down on one's knees approach' as a weopan in the hands of those in power rather than a real help for those without power again and again and again. 'Utopian' would be a very polite way of explaining someone who is still stupid enough to hold such a viewpoint. The idea of someone like that (I think that probably includes you...) should really look at themselves and their ideas more closely before accusing marxists of being the 'utopians'
I've no intention or desire to become a Marxist.
