The American banking sector, global financial world, Karl Marx, the communist socialist economic theory, private banking institutions, The Communist Manifesto, the 2008 banking crisis
In 2008, there was a major issue facing the American banking sector and the global financial world right now. A catastrophic loss of confidence stemming from a failure of the securities market has caused a number of banks to suddenly find themselves in danger of collapsing. In a sudden need of capital to keep themselves solvent and to return to effective lending operations again, many investment and commercial banks in the United States have asked the government for help. Specifically, they have asked the government to provide financial capital to refill their drained resources.
[...] Marx envisions a future society where the bourgeoisie, after destroying the feudal order, destroys itself and only the proletariat remain. These three periods feudal, bourgeois, and proletarian are clear not only by economic system, but also by different moral structures. While the bourgeoisie are free to practice "shameless, direct, brutal exploitation," the feudal hierarchy forces them into a gentler kind of absolute exploitation. What's interesting is that, despite the feeling of exploitation many Americans feel right now, the bailing out of banks feels like something from a more feudal, patriarchal era. [...]
[...] Marx would probably call this a "feudal" perspective. By contrast, the capitalistic/bourgeois perspective is supposed to mean that anybody is free to enter into the free market. To Marx, this means that the industrial leaders are able to take control of society without all the hindrances of propriety or morality: they are allowed to assert publicly that their only goal is their own financial well- being, whereas the feudal lord at least has to pretend to have in mind some sort of care for his serfs, the way a parent cares for a child (that is, the serf is always lesser in every way, but the lord generously helps his serfs out). [...]
[...] Works Cited Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. Samuel Moore, trans. New York: Washington Square Press "Views on Government Aid Depend on the Program." Gallup 24 February April 2015. [...]
[...] Any of these solutions involves moving money from the state to the private sector, which is the opposite of any Marxist economic system. Instead, Marx would want to nationalize the entire banking industry. He would want to reduce the banks from the few that are currently in power a near-monopolistic set up, yes, but note entirely so to one bank, a national bank, and then allow the state to run this bank in a way that would benefit the entire society from a Communist or Utilitarian perspective. [...]
[...] The heart of the issue, then, seems to be this idea of a monopoly. Marx believed that the core idea of capitalism was competition, and capitalist economists from Adam Smith through the present day are likely to agree. Yet for Marx, this kind of competition is manifest in a vulgar and horrible mistreatment of workers and negative manipulation of all elements of society. "Wage labor rests exclusively on competition between the laborers," Marx writes, and stresses how destructive a force this kind of competition is (Marx 78). [...]
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