It is a sign of my affection for you that I have three Wikipedia tabs open in order to properly contextualize a 170-year-old Marx essay. It is also worth noting that Barry Ritholtz is a capitalist's capitalist; Ritholtz calling for more regulation is akin to Elizabeth Warren saying credit cards can do great things. Of course, we are in corner-case bizarro world since Bill Gross is now championing a 70% tax cut. Of course, now that the fix is in, errbody mad if they aren't part of the fix so corner-case bizarro world ain't nearly as weird as we would have expected it to be. THAT SAID Sounds good to me. This is generally where I lose patience with Marx: his driving principle is that we're all idiots and the world will be better if someone is in charge and that someone's principle qualification is "agreeing with Marx." Why yes, Karl, the 2nd Republic was a shitshow, thanks for noticing. Really, France was a shitshow from Louis the 16th through de Gaulle. Be that as it may, Marx wrote about a social structure that much more closely matched "crony capitalism" than "capitalism."The peculiar character of social-democracy is epitomized in the fact that democratic-republican institutions are demanded as a means, not of doing away with two extremes, capital and wage labor, but of weakening their antagonism and transforming it into harmony.
Only one must not get the narrow-minded notion that the petty bourgeoisie, on principle, wishes to enforce an egoistic class interest.
After this analysis it is obvious that if the Montagne continually contends with the party of Order for the republic and the so-called rights of man, neither the republic nor the rights of man are its final end, any more than an army which one wants to deprive of its weapons and which resists has taken the field in order to remain in possession of its own weapons.