So the following arrives in my inbox....
"Owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and moreexpensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt willlead to bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be nationalized, and theState will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism"
Karl Marx, Das Kapital, 1867
I was immediately suspicious of this when I saw it. Karl Marx talking about the working class acquiring technology in 1867??!!?? COME ON!!!
So I'm offering this posting to forewarn you should this viral drivel arrive in your inbox.
Consider this most revealing passage from http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/01/faux_marx.php
"...no one in 1870 imagined the working class having access to bank credit. Poor people might get some time from the landlord, or a few weeks at the butcher, or they might run arrears and pay on account, but they did not buy substantial goods on credit. The first mass extension of credit to people who did not own land was the boom in installment buying that came in the 1920s."
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