Thanks for transcribing the article Tom.

It seems to me that a marxist is an unhappy chap - someone who has found no pleasure in life and so condemns the wealth and pursuit of pleasure by others.

I seriously wonder how many have happy families or any support structure to fall back upon.

I just can't imagine a marxist teaching his/her children to abhor consumer goods and shopping malls. The children would be rebellious to the point of anarchy.

Persecuting capitalism for providing too much wealth is akin to castigating the internet for providing too much information.

Preposterous.

If someone is incapable of handling the modern world and all its incumbent stresses - they need not participate in the same manner, nor wear more than one set of clothes or purchase cars, dishwashers, lawnmowers, cell phones, televisions or computers.

All the material items of the world are TOOLS. Not status symbols. If someone looks at a Mercedes or a Cadillac as a status symbol - that's their problem. First and foremost they are cars - a form of transportation.

Status and prestige are applied only when you take the TOOL out of context and compare who has it and who does not. Manufacturers may use status to boost sales - but status in industry is usually linked to one of three factors:

1. Quality
2. Rarity
3. Demand

Cost can be a factor but few think having a million dollar pile of fertilizer on a farm field is prestigious. Cost is usually determined by the above 3 factors.

The first owners of carriages were envied by those who still had to ride horseback.

Yet who envies a carriage today? All status is temporal and linked into relative frameworks.

So when the marxists now decry consumerism and material goods - they show they are looking at them outside the context for which they were designed.

They see through the eyes of the petty and the jealous or the opposite side of the coin from the eyes of the insecure status seeker.

Tools are neither evil nor good.

After the war in Germany many took their lives when they lost everything. The war showed the true nature of people - the kind and loving who shared freely were the survivors. The horders and the mean spirited showed their true faces as well.

Farmers, the looked down upon class, held all the cards. One chicken or a bag of potatoes was worth a hundred mark set of fine linens.

Paper money had no real value. Gold, long held as some sort of universal currency had no real value. Peoples needs - food, shelter and clothes were the needs of the day. Gold was worthless in bartering when everyone wants goods that will help them survive the next week and month.

Many of the ordinary German people lost their life savings, some lost fortunes, when the war came and went. Some went off to blow their brains out - because they did not see their possessions in perspective - as many and varied TOOLS.

Throwing away or stepping back production of TOOLS is insane. The world needs more advanced tools and food and sophisticated shelter - not less.

Capitalism is the best method the planet has yet of insuring progress because it lets a free market decide the value of goods and services.

The aforementioned quality, rarirty and demand will be rewarded with consumer loyalty and even with "prestige."

Many old Mercedes lasted several hundred thousand miles when other cars lasted fifty thousand. For this quality - the car has been rewarded by consumers with brand loyalty and patronage. Mercedes increases prices to take advantage of this perceived quality - and people will pay it so long as this quality remains. However, should their product or tool cease to be more durable and better made than competitor's - their product will eventually languish in showrooms and be shunned by consumers. The free market at work.

Capitalism has the necessary checks and balances to keep the world growing.

The poor nations - surprise - are almost never capitalistic. They have little or no industry and likewise few jobs. Education can't be funded and so the masses remain illiterate and unaware of even the most basic scientific principles. The time-killing hobby, naturally, is unprotected procreation and this just compounds the problem.

Is this better than capitalist progress?

I think not.

If anything should be condemned - it is the marxists who help stifle capitalist growth into these regions or decry capitalist imperialism.

One of the least known secrets of capitalism is this:

Collective intelligence, primarily through literacy and advanced communication, follows in capitalism's wake. Human progress has been expedited by capitalism.

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