Karl Marx on how people get rich

. . . reminds us of the Obama doctrine, as in (to business moguls) “you didn’t build that,” echoed (then walked back) by Hillary a week ago.

Marx’s definition of “primitive accumulation” of money as what’s achieved by “force, robbery, subjugation of the masses facilitating their expoliation, . . .  admirably tallied with ideas common among intellectuals of all types, says Joseph Schumpeter in his 1942 book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. .” (Italics added)

Marx “contemptuously rejects the bourgeois nursery tale . . . that some people [become] capitalists by superior intelligence and energy in working and saving.”

He was “well advised to sneer at that story about the good boys [hard-working smarty pants]. To call for a guffaw is no doubt an excellent method of disposing of an uncomfortable truth, as every politician knows to his profit.”

However, “this [alleged] children’s tale . .. tells a good deal” of the truth.” In fact, “nine out of ten” cases of business success are accounted for by “supernnormal intelligence and energy,” says Schumpeter.

He’s worth our attention, writing as he did with flair and basing his analyses on 40 years of reading and thinking. He’s not blowing hard at Marx either. Indeed he defends him from some heavy-duty accusations, of which more later.