Wednesday, February 22, 2006

In the beginning...

In the beginning Capital created the newspaper and the academy.

And the newspaper covered current events; and the academy pursued the higher learning.

And Capital said: let there be ideology: and there was ideology.

And Capital saw the ideology, that it was bourgeois: and Capital divided the political economists from the factory workers.

And Capital called the ideology Truth, and he called criticism Fallacy. And from morning until evening was the length of the working day.

So Capital created man in his own image, in the image of Capital created he him; financier and factory hand created he them.

Now the socialist was more subtle than any beast of the field which Capital had made. And he said unto the factory worker, Yea, hath Capital said, Ye shall produce surplus value unto the Last Hour of the day?

And the factory worker said unto the socialist, We may work from dawn to dusk:
But of the fruit of our labour, Capital hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it lest ye die.

And the socialist said unto the worker, Ye shall not surely die:
For Capital doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as capital, knowing the difference between leisure and fatigue.

And when the worker saw that the shorter day was good for life, and that it was pleasant and made one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that their labour was being appropriated; and they sewed a banner together, and demanded an eight-hour day.

And the LORD Capital said unto the worker, What is this that thou hast done?

And the worker said, The socialist enlightened me, and I did rest resist.

And the LORD Capital said unto the socialist, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:

Unto the worker he said, I will greatly multiply thy divisions and thy alienation; in debt thou shalt bring forth commodities; and thy desire shall be to thy paycheck, and it shall rule over thee.

And the LORD Capital said, Behold, the newspaper is become muckrakish and the academy simmers with heresy: and now, lest they put forth their analysis, and embolden the workers to take also of the tree of state, and to live in liberty:

Therefore the LORD Capital convened a tells-you-what-to-think tank; And it was adorned with "fellows" and "seminars"; And these scholarly adornments lent it the cachet of the academy.

And the tells-you-what-to-think tank was nimble, like unto a newspaper; And it cranked out boilerplate for publication in the daily press.

And the LORD Capital saw that the tells-you-what-to-think tank was faithful and adaptive unto his each policy vacillation; that it was good.

So Capital created scores of tells-you-what-to-think tanks in his own image, in the image of Capital created he them; Heritage Foundation and American

Enterprise Institute created he them; National Center for Policy Analysis and Centre for Policy Studies created he them; Fraser Institute and Friends of Europe created he them.

And Capital blessed them with endowments of cash, and Capital said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply the boilerplate, and replenish the ideology, and subdue the earth: and have dominion over the scribes of the newspaper and over the eggheads of the academy, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

Stolen from Max Speak, You Listen!

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