Economy & Equality: Marxism Vs Berryism

Marx | Modern Communistic Society | Government | Money | Berryism

By Darryl E Berry Jr

July 4, 2020 Updated

I remember a time when I was in great uproar about society, and government, and police, and so forth.

The exploitation, and murder, and infringement of liberty, and slavery by other names. Finally, I realized that it’s apparently just one percent of “them” and ninety-nine percent of “us” – or so the narrative goes.

Perhaps the disparity is even greater nowadays. Perhaps a bit in the other direction counting their henchmen. But it became clear to me that we can simply stop participating. We can make a world free of government and free of money, as I worded it. And we can do this any time we’re ready to – all of us, including “them”.

The people who would frequent my social media page, joining in complaining about government and police and “the elite” and so forth, I began to ask them: ‘Are you ready to unite and make a world free of government, and free of money?’ Surprisingly, some said we need government. It just needs to be tweaked some. Others said they’re not ready, or they don’t want to, and that’s that. Some said “the people” aren’t ready. They have growing to do, awareness to gather. Surely. Others simply didn’t respond. And then I saw the problem of an unjust, tyrant-ruled, population-exploiting society for what it really is. The problem is not the one percent. The problem is the ninety-nine percent.

Professor Hoofard touched upon it in passing, during a hypothetical via a recounting of the Marxist position of revolt: “The 1% can’t hold off the whole 99% all by themselves” (Hoofard, A, 65:25). So, it’s clear then why that hasn’t happened yet. Because the ninety-nine percent don’t want it to. The ‘slaves by other names’ as I call us, we want to be slaves, for whatever reason. Fear. Laziness. I remember years before this, talking to someone about money and such. This person wanted the monetary system to remain in place because they hoped to one day be on the top. They’re at the bottom now, a peon now, ‘but one day.’ They don’t mind the slavery because they hope to be a slave master. I’ve been there before. Insanity.

I’m reminded of what Raghunath Cappo said:

“[I thought] I’m not greedy, I’m not angry. I’m in a band. I have no money. If you’ve ever been in a band it costs money to buy a guitar. Got a guitar, cost money to buy strings. Got strings, cost money to buy an amp. So, it’s just a money pit to be in a band. And you get paid 50 bucks or whatever. So, I’m thinking, not me. But as my band got more successful, I realized man, there is money out there that I want. And I remember I got offered money for the first time being a band. Wow! I can get money. ‘I should get you know; I wrote these songs I should get more of that money.’ You get in a fight with the drummer. ‘No, I should get that money.’ ‘We should split it four ways.’ ‘No way I did so much more I booked everything.’ And I realized wow, I wasn’t not greedy, I just had no money. I’m covered with greed. People hate the greedy, hate the rich, hate the 1%, you got to see what would happen if you were in that position” (Cappo, 37:36-38:28).

Karl Marx makes some good points with what he had. He didn’t have the benefit of thinkers like Jacque Fresco and Larken Rose and Malcolm X or Bashar the Extraterrestrial and Sasha the Pleiadian or works such as A Course in Miracles. I’ll focus on just a few Marxist points herein.

Several core points he gets wrong because of incorrect fundamental premises. If Karl Marx’s position is that “economy determines humanity” (Haecker, 69), then who or what pray tell makes economies? Human beings make economies. But it’s easy to see how he can have this so backwards. He’s a staunch materialist (Haecker, 66-67). So, it stands to reason that he’d put the cart before the horse in other areas as well.

Social systems don’t make people be the way they are. People, due to the way they are, make and abide and tolerate social systems. Otherwise, what social system created or made humanity in the first place? I’ve yet to see any evolutionist show an illustration of first a dollar bill or a coin, and then a monkey, and then a humanoid, and then a human being, in the progression of evolution. And this ‘cart before the horse’ materialist position helps to cement what he thinks the solution must be.

He apparently has this grand image of the people needing to revolt against their rulers and overthrow them (Haecker, 71). But it’s just one percent of the population. There’s virtually no one to overthrow. If we simply stopped participating in government, and stopped participating in money; if we were sane enough to simply stop funneling our efforts and resources into a self-sabotaging system, to instead work together with openness and honesty and respect for liberty and freedom, then the system of exploitation would be over.

Professor Hoofard presents an interesting portrait. There are two people with collective ownership of one hundred thousand dollars, each having their own view of its use, and being unable to use any of it without permission from the other (Hoofard, B, 1:05:35). And in another version, both have divided the money evenly among themselves, but one builds their wealth and the other squanders what they had (Hoofard, B, 1:09:35). In the former scenario they are equal but not free to utilize the money as they wish, and in the latter, they are free but end up unequal – and the supposed difficulty is apparently amplified with more people involved (Hoofard, B, 1:05:44).

In both scenarios both are insane. Like how Marx must view humanity, albeit apparently unconsciously. A monumental fight is imagined between ninety-nine percent of the population and one percent of the population. For some magical reason, in order to be free, the people making all the goods, producing all the products, providing all the services, are imagined to somehow need to overthrow or overcome or convince one percent of the population who are contributing nothing of value to society. It’s so laughable to me. Those producing could simply produce for each other freely, and the one percent can then either join in peace and freedom and liberty and equality or starve.

Given the previous scenarios amplified to a sane society of people, everyone would simply recognize that “money” is just wasted resources – wasted trees/paper and metals, or waster computer space or memory and wasted electricity – and simply discontinue utilizing money altogether and work together to make abundance for everyone. The Berryist recognizes that there’s more wealth than money as it is. Quite literally. We have so much more wealth than money that we must make up money within made-up money so there could even seem to be enough money to buy all the things we have available. Without credit people simply wouldn’t be able to buy things. There’s literally more goods and services than money in existence – and with production and quality increasing exponentially, perhaps even possible to be put into existence.

Credit is not money. It’s just imagined money. Numbers on the screen that we treat as if it’s money. And money isn’t even truly valuable anyway. What’s the difference between a hundred-dollar bill and a one-dollar bill? We decide that one can buy one hundred of those things, but the other can buy only one. It’s completely arbitrary. But in our insanity people believe that money makes the world go around. If you were to airbrush out money and everyone kept doing what they were doing the world goes on fine.

Marx apparently said, “Money plays the largest part in determining the course of history.” That may in fact be how it looks, how it plays out in the world, i.e. how we make it look or play out. But again, who makes the money? Who decides to give it any value or credence whatsoever? We do. And thus, by our belief and psychological investment, who chooses to give value to the tool of exploitation and destruction that the makers of the tool (the 1%) simply make up out of thin air anyway? We do.

The Berryist can see that since we in fact have much more stuff than our money can even keep up with, that we can easily do away with money and have more than enough goods and labor and services and work for everyone. Perhaps everyone will be working only 2 hours a week, or 4 hours a week, if that – in the sense of mundane, upkeep tasks. With full utilization of machinery, we could probably eliminate manual labor entirely. Jacque Fresco saw that. Leaving us with ample time available to learn, and grow, and produce art, and science, and discover, and play. But that’s for people sane enough to see it and make it a reality. Let’s go back to our 40-hour plus work weeks for scraps.

I’ve spoken with people who have lived off the trash thrown away by grocery stores. And that’s not counting all that’s bought, as well as what’s still on the shelves, and in transit. All the food thrown away after big banquets and events. It’s clear that there’s enough wealth for everyone – wealth in the form of resources enough for everyone to have whatever they wanted without money being involved at all if we cooperated and utilized it all wisely.

Mark Blaug shares in his article on economics an image illustrating the flow of goods/services and labor and money in a capitalist economy (Blaug). Productive services are going into businesses, so providers can be paid money by business, just so the services and products can be bought back from businesses, with the money being given back to businesses. It’s hilarious. The entire right side of the equation – the business side and all money – could simply be eliminated, and people could just work together as human beings.

Contrary to Marx (Marx & Equality (B), 44:00-51:00), the worker bee ninety-nine percent can’t be exploited by the one percept but that we choose to be. The so-called one percent are just the insane few of the insane whole who made it to a certain position in society. Be we can look next door, or in our families, or to our schoolmates growing up, or our parents or other family members, and find the same exploiters. They simply aren’t in a position that people think they are “the one percent” and thus funnel almost all their labor to them.

Contrary to Marxism (Marx & Equality (A), 1:05:00-40), neither force nor overthrow is necessary to end the system of exploitation. Simply a cessation of participation and a choice to work together otherwise. But we don’t want to. We’re not sane enough yet; again, we’re just the exploiters who happened to not end up in the big exploiter’s seat. If you must force someone to be free, they’re not sane (Marx & Equality (A), 1:06:00-59). Thus, the majority are greedy slaves for the greedy and immature and selfish few of us who happened into a position to capitalize off the greed and selfishness and immaturity of everyone else. Everyone, enjoy.

Works Cited

Blaug, Mark, “Economics”. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 3 Feb 2020, https://www.britannica.com/topic/economics.

Cappo, Raghunath. “Joe Rogan Experience #1430 – Raghunath Cappo”. YouTube upload, 21 Feb 2020, https://youtu.be/UAx1Sq6usRg.

Haecker, Dorothy A. Adventures in Philosophy: A Study of Ideas That Change the World, edited by Peter Van Dusen, 4th ed., Dorothy A. Haecker, 2020.

Hoofard, Nathan Michael. “Marx & Equality (A)”. YouTube upload, 1 Jul 2020, https://youtu.be/QKlkHMq0dps.

Hoofard, Nathan Michael. “Marx & Equality (B)”. YouTube upload, 1 Jul 2020, https://youtu.be/v-Mh6C4z2DQ.

Copyright © 2020 Darryl E Berry Jr, Founder of DEBJ-NDC.

www.darryleberryjr.com | www.nextdensity.org

This article may be re-posted provided: 1) re-posted in full, 2) full attribution, including active link to this webpage (if on a website), and 3) prior notification of and confirmation from Darryl E Berry Jr. Contact me at debj@darryleberryjr.com.

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