[quote=Arraya]But the real problem, good Marxists know, isn’t simply or primarily selfishness and avarice. It’s structural and systemic. It is the de facto class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, rooted in capitalism: the private ownership of the means of production and distribution and their operation on behalf of the creation and accumulation of surplus value and profit, leading by its very nature to the ever-greater concentration of wealth, the rise of gigantic corporations, and the inter-penetration of corporate, financial, and state power. The solution is what Dr. Martin Luther King called “the real issue to be faced…the radical reconstruction of society itself.”[2] It isn’t simply less greed and materialism. It’s popular revolution leading to democratic control over the economy and a new politico-economic order that privileges the common good over private profit.

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The other real problem, as good Marxists know, is that Marxism, while defining the problem, offers no good, workable solution for fixing it.

While Russia, China, Cuba are all poor examples of Marxism at work (largely because Marxian/Marxist goals weren’t truly pursued, power was), they are emblematic of the “structural” and “systemic” problems one encounters when trying to create large-scale change.

And that is exactly what OWS is trying to do: Create change. Unfortunately, all the good articles in Progressive Magazine to the contrary, they (the movement) don’t have a clue as to how to do this. Many of the demands that OWS has cohered around: $20 Living Wage, $1T in infrastructure investment and $1T in environmental investment, has to come from somewhere.

So where? Does OWS advocate working within the present capitalist system to achieve its goals? Is it advocating a move to a Marxist system? Or, does it have something completely new in mind?

Even an eminence grise such as Paul Krugman doesn’t seem to have an answer to that one, and I’m pretty sure OWS doesn’t, either.