government, powerful and destructive as it is, is a servant of the black ooze of capital, which has no master plan, other than making more of itself.” What Marx saw as different about capitalism, and what Katch sketches so cleverly and so accessibly for a new generation of readers, is its contradictory nature: capable of revolutionizing social relations and ending scarcity through mutual aid in the mass production of things and services but incapable of tamping down increasing poverty for the many. The rewards: “A world in which every man, woman and child is born with the equal right to buy as many smartphones and factory-ripped pairs of jeans as they want.”Ĭapitalism didn’t invent inequality. Like Karl Marx for a 21st-century reader with a pinch of George Carlin or a dollop of Lenny Bruce, Katch walks us through why a corporate honcho who is a nice guy and a progressive at heart is toast when his company’s bottom line fails to meet quarterly profit targets and the expectations of institutional investors. A humorist with a keen eye for the absurdities of life under capitalism, Katch is less interested in pounding on individual bad actors and more in taking the measure of a social system that requires leadership from amoral thugs to function properly. Jack London called the masters of finance and industry “cavemen in evening dress.” Dorothy Parker quipped, “If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.”ĭanny Katch’s latest book is alternately magisterial and droll and goes well beyond slagging the robber barons of today. There are plenty of good gags about the depredations of the rich. Seriously: A Brief Guide to Human Liberation POLITICAL SCIENCE - Political Ideologies - Communism & Socialism.Socialism. Includes bibliographical references and index Danny Katch brings together the two great Marxist traditions of Karl and Groucho to provide an entertaining and insightful introduction to what the socialist tradition has to say about democracy, economics and the potential of human beings to be something more than being bomb-dropping, planet-destroying racist fools That's not exactly going to inspire millions to storm the barricades.
But after being declared dead and buried for decades, socialism has come to mean little more than something vaguely less cruel and stupid than what we have now. Opinion polls show that many people in the U.S. Introduction - Part 1: Why Do You Ask? - Ghost Stories - Dig Deeper - Part 2: Capitalism - Welcome to the Jungle - Freedom Isn't Free - Who's In Charge? - Part 3: Socialism - Imagine - Workers' Power - Revolution! - What's In a Name? - Part 4: Further Questions You Probably Never Asked - Will Socialism Be Boring? - Is Socialism a Religion? - Conclusion: Five Habits of Highly Effective Relatively Undamaged Socialists
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