From: Joanna "somewhere in volume III of CAPITAL, Marx remarks that one of the sources of capitalism's solidity as a social system is its ability to co-opt the brighter members of the working class. The same applies to ethnic minorities."
I think the Catholic church was able to do this too during the feudal era. j. ^^^^^ CB: This seems likely true ,although nobody has gone around and given "brightness" tests to those who were not coopted, so it is not exactly proven that there aren't a whole lot of "brighter" people not "coopted", like working in thankless , low paying jobs, in prison, dead, exiled. There also seems to be some implicit assumption that "brighter" people would have a natural inclination to be against the capitalist system, which then gets coopted. Why wouldn't most of the brightest have a tendency to support the system without any special "coopting" ? It might more safely be said that _some_ of the brightest are coopted. Of course, the other "half" of this observation is that capitalism ruins, imprisons or murders many or most of the brightest and those of average intelligence (smile) who oppose the system , like Joe Hill, Schenk , Whitney ( of California vs. Whitney) , Paul Robeson, Malcolm X, Schwerner, Goodman , Cheney, M.L. King, lots of Black Panthers, Assata Shakur, thousands of victims of Palmer Raids, McCarthyism, and many, many more. Many of the "brightest" who are "coopted" by carrots take note of the fact of this "big stick", that capitalism doesn't pay , and it doesn't pay to be a revolutionary. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
