Karl Marx Credit Cards Prove a Hit in Eastern Germany

[Tenofovir]

Originally Posted by Contra Mundum

LOL

This is too funny. I'd like one too, I grew up under communism

Ditto here. But I think many people are nostalgic for the old days especially if they or their parents were in the Party. You were substantially better off than others, traveling abroad and working there earned you several hundred Dollars which could buy you a car back home (or you could purchase a second hand car in Western Europe and take it home and be admired by everyone else). Social security was there as well and while shop shelves were mostly empty, if you had connections you could score excellent deals now and again, including products from West Germany. Many people are nostalgic for the old days and many young people don't appreciate what real oppression is, which is something most Western people won't appreciate either.

Now shop shelves are full of products but people have no cash. There's so much stuff to buy but little money, hehe. Now everyone complains, even people who are well off complain - fully paid off house, cars, kids educated - but still complaining because they'd like to go to Thailand every year and still save enough for luxuries.

[bpcatholic]

Marx was philosopher who was pretty poor a good deal of his life. I don't think we should equate him with Hitler or Stalin.

[austenbosten]

Originally Posted by bpcatholic

Marx was philosopher who was pretty poor a good deal of his life. I don't think we should equate him with Hitler or Stalin.

Marx was poor because he refused to work.

What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.…. Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities…. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange…. The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general.

~ Karl Marx On the Jewish Question

Thus we find every tyrant backed by a Jew, as is every pope by a Jesuit. In truth, the cravings of oppressors would be hopeless, and the practicability of war out of the question, if there were not an army of Jesuits to smother thought and a handful of Jews to ransack pockets.


… the real work is done by the Jews, and can only be done by them, as they monopolize the machinery of the loanmongering mysteries by concentrating their energies upon the barter trade in securities… Here and there and everywhere that a little capital courts investment, there is ever one of these little Jews ready to make a little suggestion or place a little bit of a loan. The smartest highwayman in the Abruzzi is not better posted up about the locale of the hard cash in a traveler’s valise or pocket than those Jews about any loose capital in the hands of a trader… The language spoken smells strongly of Babel, and the perfume which otherwise pervades the place is by no means of a choice kind.


… Thus do these loans, which are a curse to the people, a ruin to the holders, and a danger to the governments, become a blessing to the houses of the children of Judah. This Jew organization of loan-mongers is as dangerous to the people as the aristocratic organization of landowners… The fortunes amassed by these loan-mongers are immense, but the wrongs and sufferings thus entailed on the people and the encouragement thus afforded to their oppressors still remain to be told.


… The fact that 1855 years ago Christ drove the Jewish moneychangers out of the temple, and that the moneychangers of our age enlisted on the side of tyranny happen again chiefly to be Jews, is perhaps no more than a historical coincidence. The loan-mongering Jews of Europe do only on a larger and more obnoxious scale what many others do on one smaller and less significant. But it is only because the Jews are so strong that it is timely and expedient to expose and stigmatize their organization.

~ Karl Marx The Russian Loan

and it looks like Marx was a true "war-monger"

Marx, Sept 24, 1855: "The redeeming feature of war is that it puts a nation to the test. As exposure to the atmosphere reduces all mummies to instant dissolution, so war passes supreme judgment upon social systems that have outlived their vitality".

Yeah shouldn't equate him with Hitler or Stalin...oh brother

[bpcatholic]

Originally Posted by austenbosten

Yeah shouldn't equate him with Hitler or Stalin...oh brother

He wasn't directly responsible for the deaths of millions.

[austenbosten]

Originally Posted by bpcatholic

He wasn't directly responsible for the deaths of millions.

Neither was Hitler and Stalin...they just gave the orders. It was the SS and NKVD who did all the actual killing. Sorry that is a weak argument. Marx promoted an ideology that promotes violence, terror and thievery....I think Marx is partially responsible.

[bpcatholic]

Originally Posted by austenbosten

Neither was Hitler and Stalin...they just gave the orders. It was the SS and NKVD who did all the actual killing. Sorry that is a weak argument. Marx promoted an ideology that promotes violence, terror and thievery....I think Marx is partially responsible.

I'm not denying that either. His ideas did have an effect. But he had no way of implementing those ideas. Other people did. But he shouldn't be equated with those people.

[austenbosten]

Originally Posted by bpcatholic

I'm not denying that either. His ideas did have an effect. But he had no way of implementing those ideas. Other people did. But he shouldn't be equated with those people.

I think if he had a large impact on their thinking...he has a lot of responsibility. Promoting hate can lead others to engage in violence. Hitler when he was speaking in Beer Halls had no real way to implement his ideas, but the violent and hateful rhetoric he spoke drove many to attack others. I think there is a difference between action and thought (though Christians disagree) however if your thought is so intense that you promote it to the point that it drives others to carry out your thoughts, you are responsible.

Just my opinion.

[mkrol]

According to Reuters, a poll in East Germany from 2008 indicated that 43% of respondents wanted a return to socialism.

I get a similar impression talking to some Polish people who actively participated in the Solidarity movement - i.e., instead of importing western liberalism, some wanted to reform the communist system, rid it of dodgy economics and religious oppression, while keeping it free from western moral corruption. I was surprised how many positives of the former system people were able to name - Catholics, who were never part of the Party.

What they got instead was liberal morality, fragmentation of society, debt slavery, unemployment, insecurity and a replacement of state ownership with that of multinational corporations. The dictatorship of communism was replaced with the dictatorship of liberalism (and relativism). While state ownership is mostly gone, the communist and now liberal animosity towards the Church remains, and one dodgy economic system has ended up being replaced with another.

It seems that 20 years of the liberal social model has done more to undermine the authority of the Church than 50 years of communist repression, and what we see now is that the parts of Eastern Europe that managed to preserve the Catholic (or Eastern Orthodox) faith through communist rule are quickly catching up and following the West towards the abyss.

Marx was in many ways accurate in diagnosing the ills of capitalism, but the cure he proposed was just as bad as the disease. It is a shame that many of those from the former Eastern bloc, now so disillusioned with the economic injustices and moral decay of liberal democracy, are looking towards a discredited 19th Century ideologue for solutions instead of looking at the social teaching of the Church.

[bpcatholic]

Originally Posted by austenbosten

I think if he had a large impact on their thinking...he has a lot of responsibility. Promoting hate can lead others to engage in violence. Hitler when he was speaking in Beer Halls had no real way to implement his ideas, but the violent and hateful rhetoric he spoke drove many to attack others. I think there is a difference between action and thought (though Christians disagree) however if your thought is so intense that you promote it to the point that it drives others to carry out your thoughts, you are responsible.

Just my opinion.

I can see where you're coming from. However I would add that there were some saints that have said some pretty bad things, and yet the Church stills honors them (not for those things though).

[RACJ]

Originally Posted by Rich Olszewski

I think it hilarious, and would love it if Capital One offered Stalin and Franco et al on their credit cards. I'd certainly get at least one.

Stalin murdered more people than Hitler. Somehow, I'm not seeing the humor. Maybe it's just me. Rob