Bistiza-- Thanks for the Marx support. I grew up very far right (and still am connected on that side of the fence) and was shocked by how much sense Marx made. Because the Russians used his work, marxism and his insights in general are trounced on by baby boomers programmed to think his thoughts would destroy the world. Here is the best example of how smart Marx was and sorry to be long but I think you'll get a kick out of it. Also, although it reads as a judement, I assure you it is not, as I fully comprehend I am part of the continuation of a system that is designed to relegate all but the richest of the rich into forced labor. (By the way, many slaves had a better standard of living relative to their owners than many workers in America do today--I propose that is because they didn't have TV to distact them and would have risen up against their owners if they had to live in a situation that many of us face today.)
An owner owns a tree that stands in the forest. What is it's value? It really has little to no value. And Marx understood that. If it is cut down for firewood, it has value, and the person who cut that down and sold it was the person or entity most responsible for adding value. If it is cut down to make furniture, the logger and the woodworker added most of the value. Marx believed that those who added value (the workers) should be rewarded for adding that value. The owner has nothing without the workers, unless he becomes the worker himself, so why would he get a larger share or even an equal share to that of the person(s) who are adding value? Doesn't sound anything like giving people money or wealth redistribution to me, but rather just fair and just.
All of the economic systems prior to Locke and Marx had some form of this "kingdom" mentality involved. I own the land and I'll give you what you need to survive as long as you do what you are told. Both Locke and Marx understood that wasn't fair or just and that if people were smart, they would use their numbers to take (if need be) what they needed.
Along comes America with the closest thing to Locke and Marx's ideas. While the rich still got rich, the gap between the owners and the workers was the smallest it had ever been in the history of recorded time. Even 50 years ago, one man could work and provide his entire family with enough to live well. Buth then the rich (as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison predicted) got greedy and realized that they could "sell" the American public on globalization. This allowed for them to shift much of the wealth in the middle class out of real money (gold, silver, etc) and into fake numbers on paper (401k's). People love to see their fake numbers go up and up and so everyone bought on and invested in the destruction of the nation. If GE stock went down, there was pressue for it to go up and the way it goes up, is to remove wealth from America's middle class (real wealth) and replace that with fake numbers. The way to do that has been to lower costs and you do that by shipping work overseas. It worked out great for the rich, as they made a whole new class of foreign elites, who owe their success to the American leaders who shipped that wealth their way. Of course, they are only too happy to share the wealth and that is why so many of our leaders spend more of their time in foreign countries than they do in their home district. If you think that is preposterous, just call your local senator's office and ask. The same is true of our industry leaders as well.
So, what Marx aimed to do was to remove the power of the elites by adding value to the workers. He never said that people that don't work should get paid, in fact, he was actually saying the exact opposite. He was saying the elites (who do very little real work) shouldn't get the lion's share of the profits.
What I find so funny (so that I won't cry) is how many Americans have been tricked into seeing Marx as wicked with an argument that is really just a complete lie. When I finally convinced my Dad to read Marx (and it took some convincing because he thought he was going to turn red and go to hell just for reading him), he was shocked to find that he agreed almost completely with everything Marx had to say. The reason for this is that Marx's ideas are fair, just and just make good common sense.
That is why I get so defensive when I see people bashing that or continuing the lies that our government started some time ago to scare regular citizens who were getting "too rich" back into a place where they could be controlled by the King and his friends. If baby boomers want to die ignorant, I am fine with that. Their legacy is already written as the generation in the history of the world provided the best situation to make a positive impact for their community, country and the world. Their legacy will show that they instead decided to get stuff, to the detriment of their community, country and world. They also proved that Karma exists, in that most of them (this is true) are on some form of prescription drug for some kind of ailment and they get to look forward to years of "managed care" where again, someone who cares nothing of them and is paid minimum wage will be responsible for their standard of living while their children blow through the wealth they scalped from many generations worth of work. If they live long enough, they may even get to see what happens when those "fake numbers" are spent through and the realization that we now have a completely fake economy causes the dollar to crash.