It's even worse than you realize, Gee. See if my own bit of "humor" is applicable:Once upon a time, back in the 19th century, industrial production was skyrocketing. All sorts of new products were being put on the market, and were greedily gobbled up by an excited public, eager to leave the mundane and dreary existance of the farms for the opportunities that the new, growing cities offered.
This sort of thing naturally brought in parasites as well. The idea was, with all this wealth flowing around the cities, disruption of that flow might be worth something - in stolen loot, bribes to be had for preventing it, and so forth. Communism was born, a replacement for the civilized barbarism that was feudalism, a sort of 'secular nobility' if you will (playing the same role as the medeival aristocrats in regards the merchants of that day). Within a century, they were a major force to be reckoned with.
Then, a funny thing happened. The justification for the exploitation of these individuals - in that they were expropriating the value of proletarian labor - vanished. Colonialization disappeared, as the activities of modern peoples centered more and more on the virtual, and the abstract. Once booming Third-World trade centers stagnated, priced out of existance by the new technology.
Now, more and more, the labor of people is becoming more and more valueless. Impossible, you say? Doesn't value come from labor, rather than from the deliberate decision of a consumer? If the former, the new world becomes impossible; if the latter, then for those on the Left it becomes intolerable.
Now, I might have a symphony on a disk that costs less than two dollars to make (Indeed ... I can have it on the 'Net, for free). I may spend my days playing games, that fabricate a virtual envoronment for me to lose myself in. I may be educated, not inside a huge marble ediface, harkening to the words of a professor in the flesh, but in my home, with my VCR as instructor. And so forth.
More and more, in prime part because of the active pursuit of the Left to pricing labor higher and higher in value, that the actual value of unskilled and semi-skilled labor is rapidly shrinking to nothing. The few who can produce what people want to buy become fabulously wealthy, and thus, themselves ascend to the "ruling, capitalist" class - by being the only people worth turning into the high-tech proletariat necessary for such industries.
No wonder all the old Marxists are jumping ship, and turning "Green" ...
