I have, which will surprise you not a little, been speculating — partly in American funds, but more especially in English stocks, which are springing up like mushrooms this year … [and which] are forced up to quite an unreasonable level and then, for the most part, collapse…In this way, I have made over £400 and, now that the complexity of the political situation affords greater scope, I shall begin all over again.
It’s a type of operation that makes small demands on one’s time, and it’s worthwhile running some risk in order to relieve the enemy of his money.
Had I had the money during the past 10 days, I’d have made a killing on the Stock Exchange here…
The time has come again when, with wit and very little money, it’s possible to make money in London.
Marx
Do you have the source for this?
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/letters/index.htm
Its quoted everywhere, but I think its in here as I found the date to be 1864, unforutnatly it seems copyright stricken.
Its a letter to ‘Lion Philip’ - 1864
I will keep looking for a proper source.
It is on page 186-187 of this book, which has all the letters of Marx
“From letter to Lion Philips (in Zalt-Bommel) London, June 25, 1864”
Get your money up, king, as long as you’re not exploiting others. You’re right.
In capitalism there is no getting around exploiting others. Even if you have barely enough to eat this might just mean the cheap food you bought was made with more exploitation than normal (and part of it is exploiting their own consumers by ripping them off for subpar stuff).
I don’t mean that people should just “do whatever because capitalism” though, but be aware that you will be exploiting people (and the more money you have the more so) so do try to help people the more you can. And preferably by helping people in a more permanent way like moving towards a socialist society, but how exactly this help will be will vary from your conditions, your place, the time and so on.
And landlording is bad but under capitalism some may have to chose between either being a landlord/buying shares/leaving your money with the bankers/“investing” in the goverment or food insecurity/bad education/not having time for oneself… which just underscores the need to get rid of this system that puts people against people to survive just so a few can feel good about exploiting others.
You’re entirely right, but my point was that passively taking half a salary from someone for the privilege of having a roof over their head, and buying a microscopic amount of stock of a company that holds small amounts of stock in a bunch of companies are quite literally on the opposite sides of the spectrum of exploitation.
Exploitation is not a spectrum
Yeah, right, because children in the cobalt mines, prisoners stamping out license plates, and underpaid middle managers are sure exploited equally.
You don’t know what exploitation means in this context.
Exploitation, Marx’s term, is the mechanism by which the owning class reproduces their living via the labor of others. It is not a spectrum, it is a phenomenon with an unambiguous boundary. As an owner of stocks, you are benefiting from the increasing value of the property which is created by the people who work in those companies. As an owner of rentable properties, you are benefiting from the labor of workers who produce the value that built the property and the workers who produced the value that is converted to cash to pay the rent. As a middle manager, sales person, or marketer, your entire salary comes from the value produced by others, most often those laboring in extraction and manufacturing.
Exploitation is the phenomenon in which value is taken from the people producing it and used to reproduce a way of life for someone else.
Uhhh, all money you earn from owning anything is exploitation, even your retirement accounts.
Only if those low cost index funds track Boeing, Lockheed, and Raytheon <3
They do since they track the entire world market
Specific ticker? Or are you talking like a generic Vanguard S&P 500 etf?
VT
Huh, you know I never actually looked into a total world index before. Normally people focus on a specific subset of countries/industries. You’re probably largely fine with something like that (morally). Alternatively, if you’re worried you can look into ethical funds (esg funds might get you started). From memory, they’re the sorts of things that churches can invest in, and can be okay.
