Marxism observes that, by your understanding of 'stealing' - the capitalists are stealing something from their empolyees and putting it to uses the employee might not have consented to (from reinvesting in the business to lining their own pockets) and seeks to rectify this theft.
Aaaargh. The worker is getting PAID, the customer is getting a product for their money. I'm not saying it's always equitable and sometimes it's bad enough to call it stealing, but capitalism as such is NOT stealing. Marx is just reinventing language and morality to suit his deranged view of life and he's managed to create a nightmare of philosophical abuse of otherwise good minds, an atmosphere of suspiciousness rather than grace and charity and a proliferation of enemies where there are none. Ptui to Marx. He's one of the most evil minds of all time.
What you are complaining about is progressive taxes. Progressive taxes are not Marxism at all. Marx did happen to support the notion of progressive taxes - but they wouldn't be strictly necessary in a Marxist world.
To quote Adam Smith, another supporter of progressive tax.
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The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.
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From a Marxist point of view, the rich are 'stealing' (your definition) from the poor so Progressive Taxation is a way for the poor to 'steal' some of their money back from the rich. The rich get to keep some of their stolen money. Taking money that was stolen from you is hardly stealing - especially if you don't take nearly as much as was stolen.
Ya know, it's not really the facts of taxing the rich more, it's the nasty attitude marxism fosters in people toward the whole process of making money that bothers me. I can't STAND this whole philosophical milieu he's created. I'm sure there are REASONABLE ways of taxing the rich at a higher rate, but what you usually hear is this sneering judgmental hateful almost drooling vampire talk against "capitalism" as such that is just repugnant especially when the vast majority of capitalism is just small buisness owners trying to make a decent living at something they like doing.
It is clearly the case that if the farmer is paying his staff more than the value they are generating, he will lose money because they are basically stealing from him. I appreciate a perfect balance is impossible to practically reach. That does not mean we should give up trying to make the system as fair as possible.
I think we do that by adjusting as we go and the LAST thing we need is the idiotic abstract fantastic unrealistic vaporings of MARX!
Marx is a genius at abstract theory and an idiot when it comes to reality.
But you agree with Marx on so many points.
That can only be because very very occasionally he said something that reasonable people already know to be the truth.
The reality he lived in was filled with workers earning nothing and the rich getting even richer and the poor working their arses off just to feed and clothe themselves (and failing even to do that in many events).
The industrial revolution did give occasion to such inequities, and the business owners did need to be restrained, and that is what allowed a crazy theory like Marx's to get a foothold at all. But there were LOTS of people concerned about the problem, including LOTS of Christians who went out and tried to help in the communities of workers and others who tried to affect the laws and so on.
It seems he was a fairly astute observer of reality.
He suggested a system to circumvent this.
He wasn't alone in his observation of the inequities, and his system was a DISASTER. An intellectual exercise that hardly ever connected with economic or human reality, defined perfectly ordinary people as some kind of monsters, and simply substituted one natural kind of oppression due to fallen human nature that needed redress for a truly inhumane nightmare tyranny.
He also supported the idea of the rich paying proportinally more towards communal upkeep. An idea that the vast majority of western economists (fiscally conservative or otherwise) support as far as I can tell.
Fine. As I said it's the sneereing suspicious fingerpointing hatemondering I hate about Marxism which creates a new class of enemies out of ordinary people and undermines all decent human feeling. And it's on this message board. Good grief you'd think Wal-mart was Hitler himself.
OK by me if it's voluntary. But here's where violence and revolution come in to force this on the factory owner.
Violence isn't generally the best way of going about things, obviously. If it was agreed the factory owner had something that he was not entitled to (ie., he morally stole it), then isn't it moral to force the factory owner to give it back? Even if it is only legal forcing as opposed to violent force.
Way too glib there. You think you know too much about the situation. You think you know motives, you think you know things you have no way of knowing. Marxists talk like that. Fine take them to court. I'm all for justice.
Of course, the entire point of Marx's idea is that there is no such conflict with the factory owner since it would be communally owned by the workers. The main problem is what to with the people that presently have legal ownership? If they aren't morally entitled to something, but they are legally entitled to it what should we do? The methods involved are difficult, but I don't think the US has any policies that would be required to lay a decent grounding for a Marxist world.
I find this whole paragraph to border on the insane, I'm sorry, it's coming from a very nice fellow as far as I can tell but still all this talk about what one is "entitled" to makes me nervous.
Please, all I wanted to do when I started this topic was point out that there was a lot of Communist activity in America in the 20th century and that there is a legacy of that still in America and it has become entrenched in the universities and it may have more of a socioculturalphilosophical presence than an economic one.
I have to leave again to calm down.
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