-O douleur!o douleur! Le temps mange la vie,
Et l’obscur Ennemi qui ronge nos coeur
Du sang que nous perdons croit et se fortifie
(Oh horror, oh horror! Time consumes our lives
And the obscure Enemy gnaws at our hearts
As ,on our blood that flows, he thrives)
Charles Baudelaire
The War on Humanity
Cailean Bochanan
1st March, 2009
In the ideological struggle between socialists and pro-capitalists,both held the view that capitalism was a great motor force for the development of the productive forces,but the former, especially the Marxists, seeing it as, at a certain point, becoming a barrier to these forces. Both were at great pains to stress that their systems were preemninent in this aspect, since, in their minds, human advancement was dependent on sufficiency and a democratic society would also be prosperous society. They were, I believe, both correct to stress this relationship and to realize that the credibility of their systems depended on their ability to create a plentiful supply of those things necessary for a civilized existence These progressive views of history saw freedom from want and scarcity as the key to the development of the free individual, of the citizen as opposed to the slave.
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