innovative self destruction
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we can see why Marx gets so excited but.......we must confront something even more perplexing: next to the communist manifesto, the whole body of capitalist apologetics, from Adam Ferguson to Milton Friedman is remarkably pale and empty of life.
The celebrants of capitalism tell us surorisingly little of its infinite horizons. its revolutionary energy and audacity, its dynamic creativity, its adventurousness and romance, its capacity to make men not only more comfortable but more alive.
they aren't modest, but they hide theirv light under a bushel
they are actualy frightened and embarrassed to the point at which they will deny their own strength and creativity rather than look their virtues in the face and live with them.
but what are they afraid of /
not exploitation
No the real source of the trouble is that they present themselves "as the party of order" but really they don;t create anything permanent - indeed they destroy things
:these are solid citizens who would tear the world apart if it paid"
Most violently destructive rulinbg class in history"
consumate nihilists on a vaster scale than modern intellectuals can conceive"
"But these bourgeois have alienated themselves from their own creativity because they cannot bear to look into the abyss that their creativity opens up
some of Marx's most vivid and striking images are meant to force us all to confront that abyss...quotes Marx... "Modern bourgeois society , a society that has conjured up such mighty means of production and exchange, is like the sorcerer who can no longer control the powers of the underworld that he has called up by his spells"
although MArx prsents capitalists as part of the enlightenment/rational his use of words like "sorceror" and 'spectre' 'conjurer' "he is pointing to depths they deny"
marx's images also express what must acompany any genuine sense of wonder: a sense of dread"
For this miraculous world is also demonic and terrifying, swinging wildly out of control, menacing and destroying blindly as it moves. The members of th bourgeoisie repress both wonder and dread - these possessors . don't want to know how deeply they are possessed. They learn only at moments of personal and general ruin - only, that is, whne it is too late.
Marx's sorceror descends from faust and Frankenstein - mythical figures which try to expand human powers throuh rationality and unleash demonic powers that erupt irrationally beyond human control.
[in faust the sorceror becomes obsolete as a result of the whole modern social system. marx;s bourgeoisie removes within this tragic orbit - he plces teh underworld in a worldly context and shows how in a million factories and mills, banks and exchanges, dark powers work in broad daylight, social forces are driven in dreadful directions by relentless market imperatives that not even the most powerful bourgeois can control. Marx's abyss brings this abyss close to home.
