DeLong Posts a Marxist Classic

I was reading Brad DeLong's blog and enjoyed seeing this. It reminded me strongly of Charlie Rose's interview with Michael Moore. Moore was demanding a more "democratic" economy. Especially since the ordinary taxpayers are having to give trillions to the fat cats who create these economic disasters.

Here's the text of the program. To me it reads as a set of very reasonable demands. It was crafted in 1875 by the German Socialists:

The Socialist Labor party of Germany demands as a step to the solution of the social question the erection, with the help of the state, of socialistic productive establishments under the democratic control of the laboring people. These productive establishments are to place industry and agriculture in such relations that out of them the socialist organization of the whole may arise.

The Socialist Labor party of Germany demands as the foundation of the state:

1. Universal, equal and direct suffrage, with secret, obligatory voting by all citizens at all elections in state or community.


2. Direct legislation by the people. Decision as to peace or war by the people.


3. Common right to bear arms. Militia instead of the standing army.


4. Abolition of all laws of exception, especially all laws restricting the freedom of the press, of association and assemblage; above all, all laws restricting the freedom of public opinion, thought and investigation.


5. Legal judgment through the people. Free administration of law.


6. Universal and equal popular education by the state. Universal compulsory education. Free instruction in all forms of art. Declaration that religion is a private matter.

I've always found it odd that we claim to be a democratic society but the place we spend most of our time, the workplace, is a petty dictatorship. Sure, the stockholders get a kind of representative democracy where they vote for board members to run the company. But the workers are throwaway "tools" of production. At least in Germany workers get a seat on the board. It makes sense to me that boards of directors of a modern corporation need to include representatives of the workers and representatives of the large community as well as the stockholders who represent the capital put down to create the company. It is blind to run a company purely with the interests of stockholders.

When I was in high school my civics teacher passed me a copy of the Communist Manifesto to read. I was shocked at how reasonable this left wing fanatical propaganda sounded. I've since learned that Marx was a jerk. He used and abused people. He sabotaged his contemporaries if they didn't fall in behind him. His ruthless methods were honed by Lenin and the later Communists into the idiocy of Communist dictatorships. But the socialist (and even communist) literature of the 19th century sounds pretty reasonable today. This was simply people wanting a fairer deal out of life. The rich had oppressive control and they wanted a better life out from under the thumb of the capitalist class.