

Capitalism's Wicked Witch - DanielBMarkham
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-11-27/capitalisms-wicked-witch/p/

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ubernostrum
One point which I rarely see addressed in various internet fora is the
striking similarity of _form_ between orthodox Marxism and orthodox
Objectivism. I realize this may be a repugnant idea to fans of either
philosophy, but consider the following nutshell summary:

There are two classes of people in society. One class, which we call the ____,
is productive and labors to bring forth all manner of useful things. The other
class, which we call the ____, is not productive and, in fact, consists
entirely of parasites who suck the life's blood out of their fellow men. These
parasites accomplish their goal via exploitation and alienation: unjustly
separating others from the fruits of their labor, though they wrap themselves
in a philosophy by which they seek to justify their theft. One day, the
revolution will come and the productive class will rise up and throw off the
yoke of the parasites.

Broadly speaking, one can insert "poor" into the first blank and "rich" into
the second and obtain the works of Marx. Or one can insert "rich" into the
first blank and "poor" into the second and obtain the works of Rand.

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1010011010
"Allen Barra writes about sports for the Wall Street Journal".

Oh, ok.

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blasdel
I accidentally upvoted you -- sportswriting isn't any more dismal a discipline
than general news journalism.

If anything, it's better: they have an actively interested critical audience,
they have general editorial freedom, a subject that lends itself to
experimental writing, and they are expected to have a strong critical voice --
unlike news-journalism, noone wants press-release stenography.

I actively dislike professional sports, but sportswriting ain't so bad. It's a
lot like a prole version of the Literature Review world (LRB, NYRB, VQR,
etc.).

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tokenadult
The Daily Beast is one of the most dubious sources that isn't banned here on
HN. I thought the article in The Economist on the same person was much more
interesting.

[http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=146...](http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14698215)

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kiba
It is more accurate to say that Rand hate anything that is not her own views.
She also hate anarcho-capitalists, libertarians who are not randians, anti-
intellectual property libertarians, and anybody who are more extreme and
consistent than her.

She isn't some wicked witch for capitalism. She have her own kingdom.

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catzaa
Does this really belong on HN?

As a sidenote, why is it okay to quote Nietze (who died in a mental hospital)
whilst wearing a Che Guevera T-shirt yet it is wrong to say anything about
Rand?

Does the author’s personal life have any bearing on his argument?

(Btw, my favourite writer was on death row and second favourite was addicted
to morphine and shot his brains out. This does not detract any of their works
– on the contrary, it makes it more interesting).

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thwarted
Warning, this page seems to invoke the print dialog in the browser.

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w00pla
The author of this piece sounds like he has sand in his vagina (to quote South
Park).

