QUOTE(Michaeldsuarez @ Fri 14th October 2011, 10:46am)
QUOTE(communicat @ Fri 14th October 2011, 12:46pm)
It's reminiscent of the Catholic leading figure (I forget his name) who once observed: "When I gave people food, they called me a saint; when I asked why people were poor, they called me a communist."
http://pt.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dom_H%C3%A9lder_C%C3%A2maraIt's from Dom Helder Camara, who was a Roman Catholic Archbishop in Brazil.
Who famously wrote a book about the need for revolution in class-struggle, then was offended that people called him a communist.
Perhaps he figured that commies are always violent.
It's always permitted to ask WHY people are poor. But if your answer is only that they are poor because somebody else has taken their wealth away, that pretty much labels you a communist. You've found a "witch" to blame.
Of course, outright theft is sometimes part (in some places even most) of the answer. But on the world stage it's only part of the answer. Wealth isn't created in our modern industrial age by some people simply concentating the weath that was always there, in a zero-sum process. Concentration happens, to be sure, but wealth itself is created by industry and trade. Marx admitted this, but thought that such weath was basically stolen as soon as created, except in the rare cases where people manage to work alone. A very stupid and destructive idea. The syndicalists did much better.
Anyway, Camera didn't really think much about industry and trade. All he did was complain of class-struggle, see theft. I'm tired of these social theorists who don't really understand trade and engineering. Ayn Rand (who went entirely too far in the other direction) is their punishment for not paying attention.