Income and wealth inequality corrupt politics in the interest of maintaining and expanding income and wealth inequality: Back in 1867, Karl Marx notes The Times of London protesting against manufacturing's cotton lords' pressure on British governance and legislation: Karl Marx (1867): Capital https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch23.htm: 'The Times answered the cotton lord as follows: "Edmund Potter is so impressed with the exceptional and supreme importance of the cotton masters.... ‘Is it worth while keeping the machinery in order?’ again asks Mr. Potter.... By the ‘machinery’ Mr. Potter means the human machinery.... We must confess that we do not think it ‘worth while,’ or even possible, to keep the human machinery... shut... up and... oiled till it is wanted. Human machinery will rust under inaction, oil and rub it as you may. Moreover, the human machinery will, as we have just seen, get the steam up of its own accord, and burst or run amuck.... He says that it is very natural the workers should wish to emigrate; but he thinks that in spite of their desire, the nation ought to keep this half million of workers with their 700,000 dependents, shut up in the cotton districts; and as a necessary consequence, he must of course think that the nation ought to keep down their discontent by force.... The time is come when the great public opinion of these islands must operate to save this ‘working power’ from those who would deal with it as they would deal with iron, and coal, and cotton...
#noted #2019-12-08
