Marx recognizes the _material_ productivity of capitalism, while claiming that its _human_ consequences are so destructive of spirit and values that the material productivity is besides the point. That's what the "alienation of labor" is all about. Any form of bourgeois wealth, no matter how benign it may seem, necessarily dehumanizes and is thus unjust. And that's before we get into its perpetuation of a system that will lead necessarily to more openly malelovent wealth. His vision of "productive capital" occurs in a set of social arrangements lacking any feature which we might recognize as economic wealth.
The viability of those economic arrangements is hard to assess, as he himself couldn't actually specify them. (They would emerge, he claimed, upon destruction of the bourgeois framework that limits our imagination of other possibilities.) But whatever his merits as an economist (he cribbed heavily from Adam Smith) or a social theorist (cribbed from Rousseau), he was a lousy historian and completely missed the inevitable distortion of high-sounding ideals in service of the accumulation of power.
#OccupyWallStreet likely aren't Marxist, if only because they don't strike me as the sort to buckle down to "The German Ideology" never mind "Das Kapital". (And I don't conflate them with "the left", which comprises great variety, some of it considerably more thoughtful.) But phrases like "unjust creation of wealth" show an uncomfortable similarity to the Marxist technique. Such phrases are written to be undeniable -- geez, who is in favor of unjust creation of anything? But the power lies in adopting the vocabulary beneath them, the definitions of justice which turn out to reflect a particular agenda that is considerably more controversial than our common disgust at the unjust. It turns out that these organizational procedures create considerable power for those determining the language by which "just" and "unjust" shall be determined. The organized, having accepted the adoption of language as an organizational tool necessary for the correction of "injustice", lose the use of language for independent analysis -- and perhaps so deeply they don't even notice the loss. At that point, it becomes impossible for the organized to challenge the determinations of justice made by those controlling the organizational language.
The Tea Party types are necessarily unsophisticated. But they've noticed that they've gone along with a lot of fine-sounding language, only to find themselves with the short end of the stick. It's hardly to be wondered that they prefer to keep it simple, or that they find the #OccupyWallStreet types all too recognizable.
The viability of those economic arrangements is hard to assess, as he himself couldn't actually specify them. (They would emerge, he claimed, upon destruction of the bourgeois framework that limits our imagination of other possibilities.) But whatever his merits as an economist (he cribbed heavily from Adam Smith) or a social theorist (cribbed from Rousseau), he was a lousy historian and completely missed the inevitable distortion of high-sounding ideals in service of the accumulation of power.
#OccupyWallStreet likely aren't Marxist, if only because they don't strike me as the sort to buckle down to "The German Ideology" never mind "Das Kapital". (And I don't conflate them with "the left", which comprises great variety, some of it considerably more thoughtful.) But phrases like "unjust creation of wealth" show an uncomfortable similarity to the Marxist technique. Such phrases are written to be undeniable -- geez, who is in favor of unjust creation of anything? But the power lies in adopting the vocabulary beneath them, the definitions of justice which turn out to reflect a particular agenda that is considerably more controversial than our common disgust at the unjust. It turns out that these organizational procedures create considerable power for those determining the language by which "just" and "unjust" shall be determined. The organized, having accepted the adoption of language as an organizational tool necessary for the correction of "injustice", lose the use of language for independent analysis -- and perhaps so deeply they don't even notice the loss. At that point, it becomes impossible for the organized to challenge the determinations of justice made by those controlling the organizational language.
The Tea Party types are necessarily unsophisticated. But they've noticed that they've gone along with a lot of fine-sounding language, only to find themselves with the short end of the stick. It's hardly to be wondered that they prefer to keep it simple, or that they find the #OccupyWallStreet types all too recognizable.