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The Spectacle Blog
Well now.
One Rick Bookstaber has come out with a defense of class warfare.
And endorsing Karl Marx.
Who is Rick Bookstaber, you may ask?
He is a member of the Obama Administration. Specifically, in his words:
I am currently working in the Office of Financial Research. Until recently I was Senior Policy Adviser to the Financial Stability Oversight Council as well as Senior Policy Adviser at the SEC.
Mr. Bookstaber has some interesting views on class warfare, which he has just discussed yesterday on his blog. Apparently following the Daily Caller’s Tucker Carlson at a Washington event, an event where Mr. Carlson denounced class warfare, the Obama appointee took offense at the notion there was something wrong with class warfare.
So he took to his blog to disagree with Carlson, saying that:
I am not picking sides in this, but I believe such a “war” can be justified, and indeed ultimately is inevitable.
Stunningly, this Obama appointee then favorably cites the founding father of Communism, Karl Marx, saying that “… it is not surprising that Marx stated the central battle of class warfare at the time in terms of the working day.” Then comes this quote directly from Marx:
The capitalist maintains his rights as a purchaser when he tries to make the working-day as long as possible, and to make, whenever possible, two working-days out of one. On the other hand…the laborer maintains his right as seller when he wishes to reduce the working-day to one of definite normal duration. There is here, therefore, an antinomy, right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchanges. Between equal rights force decides. Hence is it that in the history of capitalist production, the determination of what is a working-day, presents itself as the result of a struggle, a struggle between collective capital, i.e., the class of capitalists, and collective labour, i.e., the working-class. — Marx, Das Kapital
Bookstaber resumes, saying (and we have done the bolding in the quote below):
Marx begins with an acknowledgement of the perception of rights on the part of both the capitalist and the laborer, but then argues that the question of the length of the working day cannot be solved by an appeal to rights, but only through class struggle, wherein “force” decides between “equal rights”. (Force can mean physical force, but can also mean the force of the political process).
The central point is that there is no way that this question of the working day or any number of other social questions, though posed as rights by the groups in conflict, can be resolved without being reformulated in terms of class struggle or class warfare.”
So what do we have here?
After a weak hedge (against the inevitable firestorm to come?), a member of the Obama Administration — who divides his time between advising Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner and the SEC — admits on his personal blog that he agrees with Karl Marx on class warfare. That “class struggle” must be decided by “force” — and that yes indeed, again in his words “Force can mean physical force” and, oh yes, “the force of the political process.” And oh by the way, this means issues must be “reformulated in terms of class struggle or class warfare.”
Where have we heard this belief in Marx before?
Here. From former SEIU leader Andy Stern lauding the Marxist slogan “workers of the world unite.” Stern is an Obama ally who was noted at one point early in the administration for having visited the White House 22 times.
And here from Ron Bloom, the Obama auto czar. Mr. Bloom, a former union official turned Obama “Manufacturing Czar.” Mr Bloom is seen here saying that the free market is nonsense and that he agrees with Mao that “political power comes largely from the barrel of a gun.”
Is there a doubt in the world left as to what is going on within the inner councils of the Obama Adminstration?
View all comments (26) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Jeffrey Lord
http://spectator.org/blog/2012/05/08/obama-official-endorses-marx-o
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Tom Poole| 5.8.12 @ 10:21AM
"The attitude of the captain is reflected throughout the crew"....Thats a saying drummed into those of us who were priveleged to Command in the "old" Navy. And it is absolutely true.
Therefor, it has to be the 'attitude' of Obama, again made clear by truth inadvertantly told (see Biden re same sex marriage), filtering down to his crew. Since this person seems to have some responsibility for monetary matters, he should be fired today, not next week. And "Turbo-Tax Tim" should go with him.
Dittohead| 5.8.12 @ 10:24AM
Soon we will all be loaded into boxcars and shipped off to Siberia. Apparently Obama learned nothing from the Soviet collapse. Perhaps he thinks he is smarter than Lenin and will get it right this time. Personally I am selling my possessions and buying winter socks.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 5.8.12 @ 11:09AM
If you leave for Siberia now on your own, I promise to send you all the winter socks you'll ever need, for if the wit of your insufferable posts is an index of your inventory of possessions, you'll only be able to keep your left foot warm.
Tim Roemer | 5.8.12 @ 10:24AM
Marx was entirely correct that rights are not won without struggle and some of the struggle was physical force. This struggle happened here and happens here. It is a simple fact that no one can deny ; it is a belief in the way that acceptance of facts are beliefs.
dc| 5.8.12 @ 11:27AM
TR, I'll look forward to gutting you and using your entrails for bait, when you and Dear Leader's mobs and praetorians come for me, my family, and my property. Good luck to you. I wonder whether you've ever successfully used force in your own life? Or just hope you can convince harder men to mass-murder in the service of your ivory tower ideology? Either way, I'm not sure your guts are worth even the low entertainment value of watching stray dogs puke upon ingesting them.
Tim Roemer | 5.8.12 @ 12:15PM
I made a comment about historical and your response was a threat and ad-hominem attack based and an assumption about what I thought policy implications would be. I had thought better of this site and I stand corrected.
dc| 5.8.12 @ 12:51PM
Ok, TR, if you're not a Marxist academic, then you need to learn to write more clearly. I do react viscerally to people whose writings lead me to believe that they will implement their superior intellect and ideology(ies) over the corpses of the men, women and children who might deign to disagree with them (which is what Marx, Lenin, and most people who advise our current Dear Leader, if not Dear Leader himself, advocate). If I over-reacted, you certainly weren't harmed by it, nor would you be harmed by me (or packs of stray dogs) if you and people like you LEAVE ME ALONE.
Teddy Roosevelt, by the way, was a fascist. Other than his (legitimate) military victories on behalf of this once-great country, what else (be specific) do you admire about him?
Only Obama-worshippers and academics (redundant, I know) don't consider George Washington an American hero. John Adams, maybe a notch below but solid nonetheless, a man who sacrificed mightily for his country.
In conclusion, calm the F down and try to write more clearly in the future, so you're not lumped in with the under-the-bridge dwelling troll scum that infests this site regularly.
Dai Alanye | 5.8.12 @ 12:48PM
dc needs to calm down. Either that or go in for the Olympic Conclusion Jumping event. Roemer made an observation not an endorsement.
Pete| 5.8.12 @ 12:03PM
Care to comment on the results of the governments that adhered to the teachings of your hero, sparky? Accept those facts.
Tim Roemer | 5.8.12 @ 12:20PM
All sorts of governments have accepted that rights are not won without struggle. And who is my hero ? I did not state that I had one. Probably my biggest hero was G.W; another was T.R. Also J.A, who was the first president who was not GW . But that is a digression.
JmsA| 5.8.12 @ 12:53PM
We don't need Herr Marx to know that; it has been going on since pre-history, just ask Mr. Darwin.
Tim Roemer | 5.8.12 @ 1:03PM
Darwin received his inspiration about natural selection by reading an essay on economics by Thomas Malthus.
JmsA| 5.8.12 @ 1:12PM
Well, good for him. But I believe it might have taken a bit more than that, including studies in biology, taxonomy, etc. The fact remains the same, though: It has been going on long before Mr. Malthus, Herr Marx, and even Mr. Darwin came up with any of their notions about it. And I tell you this, I was forced to study Marxism as a youth. I saw it's application both incrementally and at full bore. It doesn't work, but I suspect you know that already. All the best.
Skippy| 5.8.12 @ 2:38PM
Malthus was wrong as well.
Karl was on the wrong track from day 1.
But his loving devotion to his family was heartwarming.
I. B. Yellin| 5.8.12 @ 11:51AM
Folks, there's a commie in the White House!
Dittohead| 5.8.12 @ 12:37PM
And soon we shall all be herded into gulags. To the barricades!
JmsA| 5.8.12 @ 12:55PM
Many don't get or don't want to get it, I.B.
Dittohead| 5.8.12 @ 12:39PM
Why is it that Americans overwhelmingly voted for a commie leader? Could it be that the majority of Americans are commies? My god. We are mostly commies! What now?
JmsA| 5.8.12 @ 12:56PM
I refer you to my very brief post above, Dittohead.
RCV| 5.8.12 @ 2:45PM
Every time I think that Mr. Lord couldn't get any sillier, he proves me wrong...
DCA| 5.8.12 @ 3:50PM
What, exactly, is silly about the post? The fact that you don't like journalists/bloggers exposing the communist rot that constitutes and characterizes Dear Leader's inner circles? You can try to wish away this totalitarian scum's existence, but it's very real, and if not removed (and its environs bleach-blasted to re-sanitize things) by the upcoming November elections, it's going to ensure that this formerly great nation is reduced to 3d world squalor. Which I think is what you want, but not what most Americans want. Or are you just auditioning for a Re-education Camp Guard position, so you can make more hands-on decisions about which Americans, of which regime-classified "classes," should live free, or live at all?
Go back to fellatiating your graven image of Pol Pot. I'll be buying ammunition.
RCV| 5.8.12 @ 4:29PM
This nation isn't "formerly great" DCA, it's great. And the expansion of liberty over the past century and a half, broadened beyond just rich white men, has been a testament to our country's greatness. The continuing effort by idiots like you to try to convince us that we'd all be better off in "the good old days" when only little Lord Fauntelroys like the author had any influence just won't work. And engaging in silliness like this column and Jeffrey's last one -- "Obama is a communist because his slogan is 'Forward' and Mao's was 'Great Leap Forward' -- only demonstrates the intellectual vapidness of what is charitably called the "Tea Party Movement".
JP| 5.8.12 @ 3:40PM
Here is Bookstaber's resume (taken straight off his public website):
"...am currently working in the Office of Financial Research. Until recently I was Senior Policy Adviser to the Financial Stability Oversight Council as well as Senior Policy Adviser at the SEC. Before my current stint in the public sector, I worked at Bridgewater Associates, ran the Quantitative Equity Fund at FrontPoint Partners and was in charge of risk management at Moore Capital Management. In the investment banking arena, I was in charge of firm-wide risk at Salomon Brothers and was a member of Salomon's Risk Management Committee. I also spent ten years at Morgan Stanley, first designing derivatives, doing proprietary trading, and concluded my tenure there as the firm's first market risk manager. "
The man has been knee deep in Capitalism his entire career. Obviously he's made a bundle. As a matter of fact, he apparently has made so much that he can bad mouth the very system that has enriched him.
Bookstaber is the best kind of Capitalist - the Marxist variety.
LudwigVonMises| 5.9.12 @ 2:43AM
Actually having been at the same firms as Bookstaber at the same time he was the type of worker on wall street that supported the real producers - his intense jealousy of those who can produce (either trade, sell or build) is consistent with latent leftist Marxist tendencies.
James | 5.8.12 @ 4:32PM
Mr Lord: how is he an "Obama appointee"? Is he a political appointee? Or is it simply because he works for the FSOC/SEC? You really think NO
ONE at the SEC held countenanced Marxist views from 2001-2009?
Is everyone in the Army an Obama appointee? Everyone who joined since 1-20-09?
You really need to do some more work to link Obama and this guy. If you don't, you're just grasping at straws.
James
KMAL| 5.9.12 @ 3:14AM
I suggest we email Bookstaber directly at rb@bookstaber.com to ask him to leave his governemtn positions in light of his extreme views.