laotou is boring, angry and negative. I don't think he hangs around men's rooms staring. Other than his anti-American wumaoer rants, his long posts usually are pretty good. Happy New Year!

I always think of a stampede as involving hysteria or panic. This case occurred on a flight of stairs. One group was trying to go up and another wanted to go down the latter group over powered the other group.

Several years ago, near Beijing, there was an arch bridge. To view the moon people pushed up the stairs on either side of the arch. People at the top were forced, pushed off the bridge and many died. I told a Chinese friend, who said it was an accident. I told her that it really was stupidity that killed those folks.

She got extremely up set at me. A couple of days she called, sobbing and crying. One of her uncles was a police official and he had confirmed the horror of what happened. People were laughing and joking as they pushed up the stairs while watching people fall from the top and die. There was video. This was called a stampede.

"where did"his" wealth come from?" Geez, I don't know. "Capitalists" are not a monolithic group that all steal from workers or inherit wealth stolen workers. What difference does it make?

I guess you need a villain to support and explain Socialism/Marxism/Communism because without the evil Capitalist behaving heartlessly and robbing poor people the story doesn't work. What better way than to use the plight of poor working people, as in the sweat shops of 19th century England, to develop a faceless, nameless class of folks that prey on the poor. The class labeled "Capitalists" are obviously guilty as their money is witness to their crime.

The creators and leaders of totalitarian systems need to create villains to justify all or part of the coercive measures they employ to obtain and maintain control. Hitler had the Jews, Stalin had Cossacks, Mao had right roaders, and Pol Pot had people that wear eye glasses. Identification of enemies must be clear. Race, nationality, religion, ethnicity, having wealth, or owning a pair of eye glasses is easy and works. These enemies allow totalitarian leaders to mobilize the masses, whip up nationalism, race or ethnic hatred, and demonstrate brutally effective force to suppress the enemy. This demonstration, this killing of a few, or many, chickens keeps the masses in line.

Marx was a genius. But he had difficulty with money. Engels supported Marx financially for many years. Freddy was the son of a Capitalist employed by his father. So the support enjoyed by Marx was the fruit of capitalist exploitation. I guess this was okay as it was redistribution of wealth.

On the other hand, one could conclude the 'Communist Manifesto' is invalid and corrupt as it was a product of capitalism due to Engels participation. If you find all Capitalists guilty simply because they have wealth and means, then you might tar Engels with the brush of enemy of the poor. But his 1844 book was a clear indictment of the state of Capitalism in England at the time.

As a key element in Capitalism is freedom, the coercive element is minimal. Capitalism requires free, or nearly free, markets, free choice, free flow of information and a legal system which avoids political bias. A characteristic of Socialism/Marxism/Communism, from Marx to Lenin to Stalin to Mao to Jiang Zemin, is the expressed need to control information and public opinion. This control is essential to contain and mold public opinion in vilifying Capitalists and any other groups perceived as a threat to Socialism/Marxism/Communism.

Does it matter Engels took money from his Capitalist father and shared it with Marx?

As a native English speaker, I can assure you Chinese is much more difficult. :-)

As a teacher, in China, teaching a Western discipline in English, I can assure you my students would disagree.

Chinese is a 'high context' language while English is a 'low context' language. And this relationship to sound/meaning/character and context is what made Chinese difficult for me. Characters can have different sounds and/or meanings depending on context. Or, a single sound can have a multitude characters. Tones can be troublesome as well.

Here in Kunming, the普通话 you learn in the classroom may, depending on who is listening, fail you on the street. Or, you may have a 老师 who is a 昆明人 teach you pronunciation that will fail you in 北京。

I lived in 北京 for six years and even with my meager Chinese got along quite well. Of course my Chinese was a lot of 二话 but it worked fine with taxi drivers.

After a few years in 昆明 the 北京 taxi drivers no longer understood me even though my 普通话/昆明话was greatly improved.

"How do you think the capitalist gets rich?" Surely you jest.

Capitalists, as defined by Marx, are a class of evil owners of the means of production who heartily exploit workers by stealing the gains provided by their work. So, by this definition, to which you appear to subscribe, capitalists steal from workers to get rich.

Thus, Marx turned 'profit' into a bad thing and 'Capitalist' into a pejorative. But interestingly, Samuel Gompers, a British born American labor leader once said, " The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit."

What Marx failed to acknowledge is the symbiosis which exists between workers and the Capitalist. Marx ignored, I think he quite deliberately ignored, that the Capitalist puts his wealth at risk when he employs his wealth to hire workers in his employ.

Marx seems to have forgotten money, part of the Capitalist's wealth, has both an income (wealth creating) potential and a cost (money borrowed to provide the means of production).

Marx was a political economist who was selling a Utopian scheme which he knew was eventually intuitively distasteful to workers.

This is why ownership in common does not work without the coercive power of the state. Workers, poor workers, like the 'we own it, we share the wealth' idea until they realize the stealing of the fruits of their labor continues under Socialism.

Worse, the state has other uses for profits and the workers, having no choice, end up poorer. Socialism and Marxism both inherently require control, of not only the means of production, but also of the lives, likes, and thinking of the workers.

The 'Bosses' live high, eat well, enjoy life and drive nice cars while not bothered with the need to find or risk capital. The worker's sweat is cheap capital indeed.