The Karl Marx Credit Card - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#13985259
Thought this was funny.

Ed Krayewski wrote:
A bank in the former East Germany asked customers what new option they’d like to see for their credit cards, and a bust of Karl Marx won out, Reuters reports, noting, too, that a 2008 survey showed 43% of residents in the former East Germany wanting a return to socialism. Angela Merkel, hardly the socialist, hails from the region.

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Here’s some Karl Marx for thought:

  • Talk about centralisation! The credit system, which has its focus in the so-called national banks and the big money-lenders and usurers surrounding them, constitutes enormous centralisation, and gives to this class of parasites the fabulous power, not only to periodically despoil industrial capitalists, but also to interfere in actual production in a most dangerous manner — and this gang knows nothing about production and has nothing to do with it.
User avatar
By Eauz
#13985460
What's ironic about a bank capitalising on an opportunity to gain more customers and create profit? It's an excellent idea. If the clients in the region still have a connection to Soviet society, why not present them with something they can be proud to swipe at the checkout? The fact that they immortalized Marx and Engel with portraits and statues just goes to show that they did not understand Marx in the first place.

Karl Marx wrote:Neither of us cares a straw for popularity. A proof of this is for example, that, because of aversion to any personality cult, I have never permitted the numerous expressions of appreciation from various countries with which I was pestered during the existence of the International to reach the realm of publicity, and have never answered them, except occasionally by a rebuke. When Engels and I first joined the secret Communist Society we made it a condition that everything tending to encourage superstitious belief in authority was to be removed from the statutes.
#13985487
Euaz, I think irony is lost on you. Do I need to remind an avid communist such as yourself what Marx's thought was on exploitation, surplus value and interest on money?

Marx's face on a credit card is a great irony.


For those who are unfamiliar with Marx, here is what Marx had to say about the credit system:

Karl Marx wrote:
[The credit system] reproduces a new financial aristocracy, a new variety of parasites in the shape of promoters, speculators and simply nominal directors; a whole system of swindling and cheating by means of corporation promotion, stock issuance, and stock speculation.

The two characteristics immanent in the credit system are, on the one hand, to develop the incentive of capitalist production, enrichment through exploitation of the labour of others, to the purest and most colossal form of gambling and swindling, and to reduce more and more the number of the few who exploit the social wealth; on the other hand, to constitute the form of transition to a new mode of production.
#13985624
The two characteristics immanent in the credit system are, on the one hand, to develop the incentive of capitalist production, enrichment through exploitation of the labour of others, to the purest and most colossal form of gambling and swindling, and to reduce more and more the number of the few who exploit the social wealth; on the other hand, to constitute the form of transition to a new mode of production.

Sounds like he saw it as a necessary stage in the development of the glorious communist future, rather like the capitalist mode of production itself.
#13985626
To be honest , dear Karl looks really bad ass on that mastercard. There is no irony here to be honest, capitalism won, communism(Socialism, stalinism whatever) lost so we get to see Che t-shirts and Karl Marx bank cards.
User avatar
By Eauz
#13985661
Soixante-Retard wrote:Euaz, I think irony is lost on you. Do I need to remind an avid communist such as yourself what Marx's thought was on exploitation, surplus value and interest on money?

Marx's face on a credit card is a great irony.
It's marketing at its best and has nothing to do with irony. It would be irony if Marx wrote about the credit system and then himself contradicted with an opposite action/suggestion that went against his previous statement/actions.

Marx is not involved here, aside from someone using a marketing tool to get more clients.
#13985706
Marx hardly wrote in praise of the credit system, using value-laden words to describe creditors as "parasites" and their actions as "swindling", "cheating","exploitation" and "gambling".

Thus his face on a MasterCard credit card is ironic.

  • irony
    A state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often wryly amusing as a result.

It's on par with the irony of seeing Che Guevara's face on a t-shirt.
User avatar
By Eauz
#13985721
Soixante-Retard wrote:Thus his face on a MasterCard credit card is ironic.
Again, putting the face of some dead guy on a tee-shirt (or money for the matter), is not ironic at all, because they have no actual connection to the issue at hand. The only thing connecting them is a marketing tool to sell goods to consumers. Now, it would be ironic if Marx had been a major investor and making large sums of cash from the exploitation of the financial system, while writing about the negative aspects.

As with the definition you provided, the example sentence states: the irony is that I thought he could help me - Which means that you held such high value in the person to provide help (assuming he might be an expert), yet he was unable to assist.

Marx on the other hand had no direct or indirect connection to the marketing company and thus is far from ironic at all. If you want to use your sentence with Marx, it would have to be something like, although Marx wrote against the credit system, he, himself ran a credit firm that lent to people.
#13985979
I really think the amusement is lost on the communists, maybe it's a sign they were born without humor?

Well I thought it was funny and that's all I need.
User avatar
By Eauz
#13986037
mikema63 wrote:well i thought it was funny and thats all i need.
It's good to know that little things amuse you.
#13986095
It's good to know that little things amuse you.


it sure beats being unhappy all the time, why not enjoy life? instead of moping around refusing to find amusement in anything that does not meet a minimum standard of humorousness?
#13986097
Red Barn wrote:I think a card with Proudhon on it would be funnier, but maybe that's just me.


Aye, that would have been even funnier.
#13987094
mikema63 wrote:i really think the amusement is lost on the communists, maybe its a sign they were born without humor?

well i thought it was funny and thats all i need.


In Soviet Russia, irony laughs at you.

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#14145290
Well, Germany has finally one-upped our own Andrew Jackson on a central bank note.

What's next? No doubt some company or another will start making Kim Jong-il merchandise and begin selling it to the 12 or 15 North Koreans wealthy enough to afford it.

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