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Much of the first paragraphs is modeled on the Foxxom factory for (among others) Apple products. Some parts like
You are an employee in a factory. You have no union... you have no notion of how workers could challenge or influence anything... your work shifts occupy most of your time awake. If you are injured on the job, or exposure to pollutants renders you incapable of working, you are simply thrown out without compensation. You earn a pittance... you could not afford to buy [products you produce]. Not that you care. All you are concerned with is keeping this "good" job, which is actually one of the coveted ones... The corporation incurred very low costs, and constructed it in record time. There were no environmental inquiries, no tedious legal barriers, and no annoying regulations to worry about... Whatever the Corporation needs to thrive is provided by an omnipotent State... It controls all communications, chooses who will be educated and who will not... A small "middle class" of technical professionals, managers [has] access to a much more pleasant lifestyle, shops in shopping malls, goes to amusement parks... You have no access to any of these privileges and you don't expect to ever have, though you main­tain a dim hope that your "good" job will enable you to keep your family from sinking back into the squalor of your native village. Anyway, you have little to compare with...

increasingly apply to Western corporate practices anywhere, even in the US - especially if convict labour is taken into account.

A few bits look like ignorant lies:

Your employer monitors and controls every aspect of your personal life... You are unmarried, and will remain so...

... The events of the previous generation were so horrible, that your parents won't even talk about them.

And then we have this:
Communism is an ultra-conservative ideology promoting exploitation, slavery, and genocide. 

If any thinking of how to reduce exploitation leads to more exploitation, what hope is there? The described problems with Brahmins and other conservative aristocrats were considered by Marxists and such long time ago - with quite similar conclusions.

It is more interesting when Chomsky calls Lenin a conservative or a reactionary, in this video.

The author is more onto something with this:

What really does damage is the solid core of wealthy and powerful people who drive the Conservative agenda in our society. These are not "true believers," but cynical, cold, calculating experts, who know where their interests lie. They create an atmosphere of ideological fait accompli in the major institutions of our society, whether business, industry, education, civil service, or government. They have built an enormous stock of glib assertions and formulae, with which they can move any institution in the direction they want... 

... When protesters take aristocratic claims at face value, and imagine that they are fighting against "free market capitalism," or some such nonsense, instead of against ordinary, historically tried-and-true aristocracy, they profoundly misunderstand the nature of power...

...the Communist Party is seen as just another corporation, a constituent part of the Market ... All you have to do is add "Inc." to the end of "Communist Party"...

...The industrialists of the early Industrial revolution claimed to be new, as well, rising through work and intelligence to challenge the old landed gentry. But the first thing they did when they got rich was to marry into that landed gentry, and their children inherited palaces and champagne frolics ... The same is true of the current global aristocracy, which can point to a handful of genuine industrial or business creators among their number, but largely consists of mere thugs, financial swindlers, and titled parasites...


What is apparently happening is that the elites are able to play with any ideology (libertarian, communist, "liberal", whatever) to secure their privileges and cash flows. Maybe the aristocratic class had lost some control in the 20th century (thanks to the Marx manifesto, most likely), but now the traditions of rich dominance are back with vengeance.
by das monde on Fri Jun 22nd, 2012 at 05:45:22 AM EST
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