"Libertarianism, Therefore, Is The Representation Of Property In Government -- "

" -- the right which it demands is the right for money to rule. In this respect libertarianism is the new aristocracy. Its substance is the same as that of the old aristocracy, only its name and slogans have changed. The libertarian money-aristocracy, the worship of mammon, wants to rule in the name of 'freedom' and to repress the powerless, that is: those without property. The old absolutism was at least honest, and ruled in the name of power and said openly: 'l'etat c'est moi!' ['I make the law.'] The libertarian money-aristocracy, on the other hand, formally recognizes the people's rights and says that it wants a government of laws, and that the representation of the people is the ultimate purpose of the state. Nevertheless, it claims to be the law of the people and the people's representative."

("Der Liberalismus ist also die Vertretung des Besitzes in der Herrschaft; das Recht, welches er verlangt, ist die Herrschaft des Geldes. In dieser Beziehung ist der Liberalismus die neue Aristokratie; ihr Inhalt ist derselbe mit der alten Aristokratie, nur ihr Name ist geaendert und ihr Panier. Die liberale Geldaristokratie, der Mammonismus will unter dem Firma der „Freiheit" herrschen und die Machtlosen, d. h. die Besitzlosen unterdruecken; der alte Absolutismus war wenigstens ehrlich, er herrschte auch unter der Devise der Gewalt und sagte offen: l'etat c'est moi! die Volksrechte habe ich. Die liberale Geldaristokratie aber erkennt die Rechte des Volkes, ein Recht des Rechtstaates, an, will nach ihren Worten den wahren Rechtsstaat herstellen, indem sie die Volksvertretung als den ureigentlichen Zweck des Staates hinstellt, sagt aber nichtdestoweinger, dass sie selbst die Volksvertretung, das Recht des Volkes, sei.")

What's that, a manifesto written after the 2007-2008 worldwide financial crisis and the huge bailouts of financial firms? No, it's older than that. 1930's Great Depression socialism? Nope. It was written in 1846 by Ernst Dronke, one of the original Commies, a German who occasionally rubbed shoulders with Karl Marx, and who like Marx spent the last several decades of his life in exile in England. Some of this original Commie stuff really holds up, really stays fresh, unfortunately. Unfortunately, because the goals of people like Dronke and Marx are not much closer to being realized than they were in the 1840's.

Maybe they're at least becoming more comprehensible to more people. In the light of long and ever longer experience of the problems they describe.

I Can't Find A Pope Francis Effect In The Book Market Yet

Rush called Francis a Marxist. Francis makes statements about the rich and the poor which certainly sound more Leftist than Rightist. Now he's said, "I know many Marxists who are good people." In angry opposition to Francis, or so he thinks, a rightwing freemarket laissez-faire rah-rah-siss-boom-bah capitalist has written: "Capitalism and many variants called Capitalism has raised the standard of living for more people around the world than any system every created by man. Capitalism has produced more wealth and increased production greater than any other system in the world." I replied to him: "That's very close to a direct quote from the first pages of the Communist Manifesto. Which you might want to read sometime. It's only 20, 30 pages or so. Maybe some people somewhere dispute what you say about capitalism's effect on the world's wealth and productivity. Marxists certainly don't."

So that's when I wondered whether perhaps many Americans had indeed read the Communist manifesto because of Francis. What with the economy and all, and now in top of that what with Francis infuriating rightwingers on such a regular basis in such a delightful way. Marx has been read very little in the US in proportion to how much he is dissed. People don't know what they're talking about when they diss him, they're just repeating the staggeringly-successful US capitalist talking points on Marx and Communism. So I thought, maybe now, after years of spectacular worldwide abuse of financial deregulation and now with Francis, and what with the economy and all -- maybe now, finally, Americans would start reading Marx. The Communist Manifesto at least. Capital and Critique of Political Economy, that could come a little later, and then pretty soon Jimmy Kimmel and Conan O'Brian could discuss Maoism versus New Left with their movie-star guests and everybody would get it and the Earth would be saved and we could all just really get on with it. Thanks to a Pope, sure, why not, who, if not History, doesn't love irony?

But no, I was getting a little ahead of myself. I couldn't find an edition of the Communist Manifesto higher than around #20,000 on Amazon's book bestseller list. Then I thought: maybe AD-AMAZON The Portable Karl Marx,but ouch: it's at #147,305.

Even Francis himself is not burning up the track: a book by him published in November is at #1348, and AD AMAZON Evangelii Gaudium,which caused such a fooferah in the headlines? It's at #661. Holy moly, pardon my French, Holy Father. Wouldn't something by John Paul II have been at #1 by now? And in Amazon's top 20 for books there are items by Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck. It's all horribly disappointing and surprising for me, except for the success of O'Reilly and Beck, which is merely horribly disappointing for me.

Then I thought: Maybe Kindle is here and it's passed me by because I'm old, and that's where the real bestsellers are, and Francis is way up high in the Kindle bestseller list, but no. Marx, also no.

I Don't Know Why They Made This Commercial

Well, maybe I do. But if I understand what's going on here it's depressing as hell.

It's a recent American Airlines commercial, with a tall basketball player named Milos and his scrappy little agent who seems to be relentlessly lying his ass off, all around the world: "Milos only wants to play for Dallas." "Milos really wants to play for Brussells." "Milos only wants to play for Buenos Ares." "Milos only wants to play for blabbity-blabbity." "Milos really wants to play for hamana hamana." "Milos only wants to play for yip yip yip." And so forth. It seems obvious that Milos is not very sought-after, but his agent relentlessly presents him to different teams as if he were. And then at the end a voice-over sonorously intones: "We know why you fly."

Why exactly does this agent fly? And more to the point, why does American Airlines think that its potential customers want to fly alongside people like him? Because they like compulsive liars? Because they, too, are salespeople who are desperately misrepresenting their wares all over the world? Is there a great fraternity of lying, hustling weasels out there, flying all over the world on American Airlines?

I'm afraid that there just may be. Maybe somebody at the ad agency said, "You know, we've being doing really well for a long time with these slick and completely unrealistic ads. All these ads about nothing, which just set a mood and flatter businesspeople, with a lot of slow-mo of very good-looking actors portraying businesspeople in great suits staring sagely into glorious sunsets from luxury-hotel balconies and earnestly shaking hands in luxurious boardrooms with urban skyline views and opening very expensive-looking briefcases and wearing hard-hats with the sleeves of their dress shirts rolled up while they point at blueprints and relaxing in huge first-class seats and so forth, without giving the viewer any hint of what they're really doing. But maybe all those down-the-heel desperate Willie Lomans out there peddling crap to each other -- you know: our actual target demographic -- would appreciate a commercial that shows them as they actually are, doing what they actually do: wearing desperate smiles and desperately lying for a living. Let's make it a sports agent, to jazz it up a little. We don't want to get too real, showing a lying office-goods salesman whose desperate smile is wearing thin after twenty lean years; that might be a little too depressing. I know: a short sports agent with a tall basketball player who can't even throw a paper wad into a conference-room wastebasket while the little agent is trying his best to BS some team's board of directors. Kinda real, but cute and funny."

We Know Why You Fly: Because BS And Fear Make the World Go Round.