Dear Rush: "capitalism" is a marxist/socialist term too

by: Daniel De Groot

Fri Apr 02, 2010 at 17:00

Rush Limbaugh has complained today that "worker", "storefront" and "factory" are Marxist-Leninist terms.

Rush had better not use the term "capitalism" either, since according to noted Conservative Russel Kirk in 1963, Marx invented that too:

Did you know that "capitalism" is a term coined by Karl Marx? Like most Marxist terms, it is loaded and misleading to employ. So I never advocate or defend the abstraction called "capitalism."

I don't really know if Kirk is right about this, Wiki provides a more complex picture:

The initial usage of the term capitalism in its modern sense has been attributed to Louis Blanc in 1850 and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1861.[24] Marx and Engels referred to the capitalistic system (kapitalistisches System)[25][26] and to the capitalist mode of production (kapitalistische Produktionsform) in Das Kapital (1867).[27] The use of the word "capitalism" in reference to an economic system appears twice in Volume I of Das Kapital, p. 124 (German edition), and in Theories of Surplus Value, tome II, p. 493 (German edition). Marx did not extensively use the form capitalism, but instead those of capitalist and capitalist mode of production, which appear more than 2600 times in the trilogy Das Kapital.

So maybe it wasn't Marx, but was Blanc and Proudhon, which is no help to Rush since both of them were socialists. It's getting hard for Rush to avoid socialism. There is evidently no respite, not even in Costa Rica.

Daniel De Groot :: Dear Rush: "capitalism" is a marxist/socialist term too

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Dear Rush: "capitalism" is a marxist/socialist term too | 19 comments

Proudhon was an anarchist (0.00 / 0)

He was the first person to call himself an "anarchist".

by: RandomNonviolence @ Fri Apr 02, 2010 at 17:00:52 PM CDT

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sure (0.00 / 0)

but first line of the article:

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (15 January 1809 in Besançon - 19 January 1865 in Passy) was a French politician, mutualist philosopher and socialist.

Anyway I'm sure he's not someone of whom Rush would approve and be proud of using his preferred lexicon.

by: Daniel De Groot @ Fri Apr 02, 2010 at 17:30:31 PM CDT

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Yes, I should have said (0.00 / 0)

"Proudhon was an anarchist too".

by: RandomNonviolence @ Fri Apr 02, 2010 at 17:49:25 PM CDT

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And wikipedia goes on to say (4.00 / 2)

"After the events of 1848 he began to call himself a federalist." Maybe the Federalist Society should choose a new name now that they know they one they have is related to Proudhon.

by: RandomNonviolence @ Fri Apr 02, 2010 at 17:52:05 PM CDT

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Factory? (4.00 / 1)

WTF does Rush mean that "factory" is a "Marxist term"? It's a frigging word. An English word, that comes from the Latin. According to dictionary.com, the word was used in its modern sense 200 years before Marx:

Sense of "building for making goods" is first attested 1618.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

by: Paul Rosenberg @ Fri Apr 02, 2010 at 17:17:56 PM CDT

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Well you know... (4.00 / 4)

You go to your propaganda war with the vocabulary you have, not the one you wish you had.

by: bystander @ Fri Apr 02, 2010 at 17:25:47 PM CDT

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Splutter! Splutter! Splutter! (4.00 / 2)

It's raining dead white men!

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

by: Paul Rosenberg @ Fri Apr 02, 2010 at 19:01:16 PM CDT

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yeah (4.00 / 1)

I left it to the reader to determine that of course rush's statement is preposterous. How old is "worker"? Doubtful that Marx invented that term too. Did marx even use the term "store front"? It's such an awkward term, hardly the stuff of ideologues.

by: Daniel De Groot @ Fri Apr 02, 2010 at 17:32:25 PM CDT

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I believe the original text called them "emporium facades." (4.00 / 1)

(Tongue planted firmly in cheek, in case it wasn't obvious.)

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by: Gabriel D @ Fri Apr 02, 2010 at 18:57:34 PM CDT

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I Assume That Glenn Beck Has Uncovered It's Hideous Gematria Secrets (4.00 / 2)

And that my ignorance of the nefarious nature of "storefront" is simply a symptom of how out-of-touch with realomuricans I am.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

by: Paul Rosenberg @ Fri Apr 02, 2010 at 19:00:18 PM CDT

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shouldn't he be learning to red-bait en espanol by now? (4.00 / 1)

or is the threat to move to costa rica as principled as the rest of his words?

by: dr anonymous @ Fri Apr 02, 2010 at 19:57:32 PM CDT

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The limit of Rushbo's Spanish proficiency? (4.00 / 1)

1) ¿Dónde puedo encontrar a los muchachos de lujo?

(Where do I find the fancy boys?)

2) ¿Hacen usted tienen gusto del oxycontin, pequeño compañero?

(Do you like oxycontin, little fellow?)

3) ¿Usted tiene gusto de venir conmigo a mi hotel? Tengo algo demostrarle.

(Would you like to come with me to my hotel? I have something to show you.)

by: konopelli @ Sat Apr 03, 2010 at 09:13:49 AM CDT

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You folks are a hard act to follow.... (4.00 / 1)

If we rounded up all the professors and sent them out to the Real America™ to hoe turnips, in twenty years or so, nobody would have to endure the din of any words over one syllable long, let alone be expected to understand what they meant. (H/T to Mao Zedong, Sarah Palin and George Orwell, respectively.) I wonder, though, do they still hoe turnips out there, or is that now strictly reserved for Kubota, Massey-Ferguson, and Archer Daniels Midland?

Let's hope that even if Rush doesn't know the difference between a socialist and a Latter-Day-Saint, he can still tell Costa Rica from Nicaragua. It'd be a just a terrible shame if he got lost down there.

by: William Timberman @ Fri Apr 02, 2010 at 21:50:09 PM CDT

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sugar beets (4.00 / 1)

They still hoe sugar beets. Kind of look like turnips, to me. And ... drum roll ... they serve the imperial sugar industry.

by: bystander @ Sat Apr 03, 2010 at 08:29:26 AM CDT

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The truth wil not set us free (4.00 / 2)

I'll admit this one is particularly funny - and I don't object to any individual instance of simple fact checking (and requisite accompanying mocking).

But I wonder about our ability to construct a narrative or articulate our values or to say who we are and what distinguishes us from the other side other than getting our facts straight.

Rachel had a piece tonight that talked about the CA report on ACORN, that showed, yet again, that the changes against it were false. She ran through a litany of things Republicans said that were "bull pucky." It was a series of classic "Don't Think of an Elephant" moments. When the Obama Admin bothers to push back, it's almost always on the facts, not values.

This sort of thing is endemic.

If we can't even discuss our values among ourselves, how can we convey them to anyone else?

Support a Pennsylvania Progressive for Governor - Joe Hoeffel

by: David Kaib @ Fri Apr 02, 2010 at 22:07:32 PM CDT

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I have a dream.... (0.00 / 0)

It's not as though we haven't had plenty to say about what we believe. Dr. King may have been the most prominent -- and the most eloquent -- of our recent champions, but there have certainly been others, and there will even more certainly be others to come.

The best part is that every time we wake up in the morning, we get another chance at it ourselves.

by: William Timberman @ Fri Apr 02, 2010 at 22:36:44 PM CDT

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Our time horizons are very different (4.00 / 1)

I wouldn't think of King as recent - although I would point to him as someone who did not fall victim to the thing I am complaining about - an excellent model. I suspect part of the current problem is too few of us our engaged with the real stories of those who came before us, forcing a continual reinventing of the wheel. What is that old line? "The most dangerous idea in American is the long memory."

You are right about this:

The best part is that every time we wake up in the morning, we get another chance at it ourselves.

This is the beauty of problems of our own making. One can be a realist full of complaints and still have hope for tomorrow.

Support a Pennsylvania Progressive for Governor - Joe Hoeffel

by: David Kaib @ Fri Apr 02, 2010 at 23:05:47 PM CDT

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Ain't it the truth (0.00 / 0)