Cacus was a Roman mythological figure who stole oxen by dragging...

  1. 13,568 Posts.
    lightbulb Created with Sketch. 125
    Cacus was a Roman mythological figure who stole oxen by dragging them backwards into his den so that the footprints made it appear they had gone out from there. After quoting Luther's account of the story, Marx exclaims, "an excellent picture, it fits the capitalist in general, who pretends that what he has taken from others and brought into his den emanates from him, and by causing it to go backwards, he gives it the semblance of having come from his den."

    Capitalists present themselves as producers of wealth, providers of jobs, donors and public benefactors. The press (their press) usually refers to them as "industry." Is this an accurate description of who they are and what they do? What stands out clearly from the example of Cacus is that what Marx and Marxists call bourgeois ideology does not so much falsify the facts as misinterpret them so as to reverse what has taken place: The footprints are there for all to see, but if we limit ourselves to what is immediately apparent (the subject matter of "empirical" social science) we will arrive at a conclusion that is the exact opposite of the truth.

    Only if we examine what led up to the event in question and its surrounding circumstances—that is, its real history and the system of events in which it resides—can we hope to understand what really happened and why.

    In the case of the capitalists, only by examining how they got their wealth from the surplus labor of previous generations of workers (history) and how our laws, customs and culture are biased in their favor (structure) can we see it is not the capitalists who are serving society but the rest of society that is serving them.


    https://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/marxism_universities_content.php
 
arrow-down-2 Created with Sketch. arrow-down-2 Created with Sketch.