more on this theme | more from this thinker
Full Idea
Marx gives a first-rate account of the mechanism of capitalist oppression; but so good is it that one finds it hard to visualise how this mechanism could cease to function. …The exploitation is the competitive need to expand as rapidly as possible.
Gist of Idea
Marx showed that capitalist oppression, because of competition, is unstoppable
Source
Simone Weil (Reflections on Liberty and Social Oppression [1934], p.39)
Book Ref
Weil,Simone: 'Oppression and Liberty' [Routledge 1955], p.39
A Reaction
[Last bit compressed] This pinpoints the main motivation for desiring to overthrow capitalism. Resistance to that view is presumably the fear that an even worse oppression might replace it.
| 23871 | No central authority can initiate decentralisation [Weil] |
| 23870 | Decentralisation is only possible by co-operation between strong and weak - which is absurd [Weil] |
| 23861 | Marx showed that capitalist oppression, because of competition, is unstoppable [Weil] |
| 23863 | Only individual people of good will can achieve social progress [Weil] |
| 23864 | Inequality could easily be mitigated, if it were not for the struggle for power [Weil] |
| 23865 | Morality would improve if people could pursue private interests [Weil] |
| 23866 | In oppressive societies the scope of actual control is extended by a religion of power [Weil] |
| 23867 | After a bloody revolution the group which already had the power comes to the fore [Weil] |
| 23868 | The pleasure of completing tasks motivates just as well as the whip of slavery [Weil] |
| 23869 | In the least evil societies people can think, control community life, and be autonomous [Weil] |