
You are a Marxist – but don't worry - retroafroman
http://www.philosophersmail.com/110314-capitalism-marxism.php
======
michaelsbradley
The article reminded me of Pope Benedict XVI's short commentary on Marx in his
2007 encyclical letter _Spe Salvi_ [1]:

"Together with the victory of the revolution, though, Marx's fundamental error
also became evident. He showed precisely how to overthrow the existing order,
but he did not say how matters should proceed thereafter. He simply presumed
that with the expropriation of the ruling class, with the fall of political
power and the socialization of means of production, the new Jerusalem would be
realized. Then, indeed, all contradictions would be resolved, man and the
world would finally sort themselves out. Then everything would be able to
proceed by itself along the right path, because everything would belong to
everyone and all would desire the best for one another. Thus, having
accomplished the revolution, Lenin must have realized that the writings of the
master gave no indication as to how to proceed. True, Marx had spoken of the
interim phase of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a necessity which in
time would automatically become redundant. This 'intermediate phase' we know
all too well, and we also know how it then developed, not ushering in a
perfect world, but leaving behind a trail of appalling destruction. Marx not
only omitted to work out how this new world would be organized—which should,
of course, have been unnecessary. His silence on this matter follows logically
from his chosen approach. His error lay deeper. He forgot that man always
remains man. He forgot man and he forgot man's freedom. He forgot that freedom
always remains also freedom for evil. He thought that once the economy had
been put right, everything would automatically be put right. His real error is
materialism: man, in fact, is not merely the product of economic conditions,
and it is not possible to redeem him purely from the outside by creating a
favourable economic environment."

[1]
[http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/d...](http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-
xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi_en.html)

~~~
yukichan
I was with this until this part:

> His real error is materialism: man, in fact, is not merely the product of
> economic conditions, and it is not possible to redeem him purely from the
> outside by creating a favourable economic environment."

That's going to segue (thanks for the spelling check davidw) obviously into
some religions thing about the soul or something. And I take issue with having
to be redeemed. I do not need to be redeemed.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> And I take issue with having to be redeemed. I do not need to be redeemed.

Marx thought you did. He thought you needed redeemed from an evil, oppressive
economic system. He thought that, by doing so, everything would become
wonderful. The point _of the quoted words_ was not that you need to be
spiritually redeeded, but that Marx's idea of redemption didn't work because
his view of humans was wrong.

~~~
yukichan
> He thought you needed redeemed from an evil, oppressive economic system.

And now I take issue with your use of pronouns. Marx never knew me, and
neither do you.

~~~
obstacle1
Can we not be intentionally dense for a second? Obviously Marx wasn't talking
about _you_ personally as in whatever identity you (delusionally) think
constitutes _you_. He thought there was some fundamental characteristic common
to all human beings, so speaking of _you_ as a generality makes sense within
the framework, since as a human you'd have that characteristic.

But I'm pretty sure you knew that, and were just being difficult.

------
shornlacuna
> [Marx] thought we should abolish private property. People should not be
> allowed to own things. At certain moments one can sympathise. But it's like
> wanting to ban gossip or forbid watching television. It's going to war with
> human behaviour.

A common misconception is that 'private property' here is to be equated with
'personal property'. Marx and marxists do not believe that personal property
should be abolished, or indeed that it makes sense to try and do so.

Generally speaking, the private property that Marx advocated abolishing was
private ownership of land and the 'means of production', the latter being a
category akin to 'fixed assets'.

~~~
atom-morgan
I've never been able to find a consistent definition of "means of production"
or the distinction between "personal" and "private" property.

At what point does my laptop go from a piece of machinery that gives me access
to HN to a mean of production that could _make_ something like HN?

~~~
chongli
Copyright is a capitalist invention. It would not exist in a Marxist society.
This makes your question trivial to answer: your laptop becomes a means of
production when it's connected to a machine that produces real goods.

~~~
atom-morgan
Copyright, along with patents and trademarks, is not a capitalist invention.
It's a privilege granted by the government. Without the government close by,
individuals or businesses would not have the power to enforce whatever it is
they're trying to protect. In a truly free market, copyright would not exist.

~~~
humanrebar
Well, it would exist to the extent that DRM could enforce it.

~~~
atom-morgan
True. I didn't think of this. However, DRM is much different than something
along the lines of a patent.

~~~
humanrebar
Not a patent, per se, since patents require publication. But intellectual
property enforcement can exist outside of legal fiat through DRM,
certifications, obfuscation (perhaps a special case of DRM), trade secrets,
and trade organizations (like guilds). Not to mention social pressures for
creators to respect the work of others (as in comics stealing jokes).

Point being, purely private intellectual property rights exist, but usually
only to the degree that they are enforced by private organizations or the
societies they belong to.

~~~
dllthomas
Patent also doesn't distinguish by origin.

------
_delirium
An aside from the article's subject, but where I thought it was going from the
title is another way in which many people (esp. technologists) are Marxist in
a sense: methodologically viewing society and history as constructed in large
part through the interplay of material 'systems', like technologies, the
natural world, trade patterns, etc. It's since become a common enough view
that it's no longer exclusively Marxist, but it was one of the big departures
of Marxist historiography from classic historiographies (aristocratic ones,
romantic-nationalist ones, etc.), which focused on the role of people and
culture, especially leaders (and other Great Men) and nations, in shaping
history. The idea that you could explain things about how a society is
organized by investigating the development of steel mills, tracing money
flows, and looking at employment relationships (the "base"), rather than only
looking at what happens in a society's parliament or culture (the
"superstructure"), was pretty unusual.

------
glenra
> _Why are we all so anxious all the time? Marx had a diagnosis. Because
> capitalism makes the human being utterly expendable..._

I'm sorry, but that's just nuts unless you can point to a society - of any
sort anywhere - that contains no anxious people. People are (sometimes)
anxious for the same reason deer and mice and all other animals on the planet
are anxious: _being anxious has survival value_.

Suppose we _completely solved_ the need to pay for food and housing; people
would be anxious about health care. Suppose we solved that too? People would
be anxious about the need for _pet_ health care. Or _better_ housing. Or
social validation. Or we'd start inventing _brand new threats_ to be anxious
about, like catastrophic global warming or nuclear meltdowns or economic
collapse or being hit by a meteor.

We worry because worrying is part of being human.

~~~
atmosx
> I'm sorry, but that's just nuts unless you can point to a society - of any
> sort anywhere - that contains no anxious people.

Tibet.

That said, the level of anxiety in western society if the no-1 reason of
aging.

> Suppose we completely solved the need to pay for food and housing; people
> would be anxious about health care. Suppose we solved that too? People would
> be anxious about the need for pet health care.

Hm, you have too many assumptions there. Not that I'm very fond of _social
sciences_ but do you have at least one study to support your claim? Otherwise,
Newton might get displeased[2].

What you're saying that Maslow[1] was wrong? Maybe his hierarchy should be a
_square_ since _physiological_ and _self-actualization_ is one and the same
according to your approach.

> We worry because worrying is part of being human.

Of course if my parent is not at home at 23:00 o'clock, I worry. When my
parent comes back I stop being worried. It's transitory. I think that in
Ethiopia, in Ukraine and large parts of 21'st century world, most people are
_worried_ 24/7 though. It's NOT _the same_.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs)
[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypotheses_non_fingo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypotheses_non_fingo)

~~~
sigzero
> Tibet

Wrong. Everyone has been anxious about something sometime. Everyone.

~~~
atmosx
I'm positive that I didn't read _at least once_. As I get it, he means
_anxious of the time_ not _twice in a lifetime_.

~~~
glenra
Of course, the other answer is that we're _not_ anxious _all the time_. Maybe
Marx was. Maybe the people who find Marx insightful are too. I'm not. Most
people are anxious _some_ of the time. And they should be, because being
anxious _some_ of the time can prompt you to improve your life situation or
avoid immediate danger.

------
sharkweek
_He also observed how in the modern world, fewer and fewer jobs have this
characteristic of allowing us to see the best of ourselves in what we do._

Reminds me of my favorite quote from The Wire:

"We used to make shit in this country; build shit. Now we just put our hand in
the next guy's pocket"

~~~
icambron
A little OT, but I distinctly remember rolling my eyes when I watched that,
mostly because I hear this sentiment all the time. Only the creation of
physical things apparently counts as real productivity, and all of this
service economy crap is somehow wishy washy or even illusory. It's a fetish
for manufacturing, with this back-when-men-were-real-men ring to it.

But economic growth can't plausibly come from creating ever more things, and
the obsession with _stuff_ is crazy talk. Delivering services is definitely
the thing a modern economy should aspire to. Leave the making of shit to the
robots and other countries, with whom you shouldn't even want to compete. It's
just nostalgia.

~~~
clarry
It's not necessarily a fetish _for_ manufacturing as much as it is an aversion
towards the service economy which we didn't need so much in the past but now
have to work in because we don't have much choice. It's either that or
unemployment. If you feel we have the means to produce all the tangible
_things_ we need, but don't feel the need for all these services... it feels
very artificial and forced.

EDIT: To elaborate on my point, the article mentions the desire for meaningful
work. I would guess in the past most physical objects are created to serve a
very concrete, real human need. But many services seem to be about coming up
with ways to convince people to part with their money, often just creating and
then "servicing random desires." So such work might not feel very meaningful
at all. Hence, having to work such a job in order to get money for the things
we actually need (and are already capable of producing for everyone) feels
very artificial.

Of course this is not strictly a property of services. Today we also produce
lots of gadgets and widgets and nonsense that aren't in any way relevant to
our needs.

~~~
wdewind
> Of course this is not strictly a property of services. Today we also produce
> lots of gadgets and widgets and nonsense that aren't in any way relevant to
> our needs.

This is like the article that bitches about engineers making Snapchat instead
of working on Healthcare.gov

There is a massive implication in what you are saying and in that article that
stuff like Snapchat is trivial and useless. People forget that being a human
being is an emotional experience, and that while we require food, shelter
etc., to live, in order to truly live we require much more. Snapchat, gadgets
and widgets and nonsense? These are all crucial parts of human emotional
existence.

~~~
clarry
Were our ancestors' lives miserable because they didn't have Snapchat and
gadgets?

Now I have to admit to owning some gadgets myself, but few of these would I
consider crucial to my existence, emotional or not. Very very few of them have
any impact on my daily life. And if I could choose to have fewer gadgets but
more free time (with less spent on doing things I consider meaningless), I
would do so. It would be nicer still if the people around me could make the
same choice.

I would argue that our emotional existence could improve if it wasn't a
necessity to sell it to each other. It's a cultural and social thing,
something you can do in your free time.

~~~
wdewind
> Were our ancestors' lives miserable because they didn't have Snapchat and
> gadgets?

Yes they were (as well as for many other reasons).

Imagine a cancer patient hooked up to all the crucial life saving equipment
that the engineers who did not choose "frivolity" in their careers built. What
is that patient doing? They are on their iPhones, on twitter, on Snapchat etc.
And these products are really really making a difference in their lives. In
being able to not feel so isolated. Until you've seen something like this
happen, it's very easy to dismiss these products as stupid cat picture
networks. But sometimes cat picture networks really make people feel better,
and that's kind of what it's all about.

I just think people frequently criticize others' non-infrastructure work as
"frivolous," forgetting that the point of infrastructure is to support a life
that is fun and feels good.

------
bcoates
This article takes some pretty big liberties with the present to make Marx
look more prescient than he was.

The idea that people are being forced out of inherently fulfilling object-
manufacturing jobs into inherently unsatisfying service jobs isn't
particularly true, and even if it were, that's not what alienation means.
While many service jobs suck in ways Marx can be applied to, mass production
was the original alienating job.

It's the lack of agency that's alienating, not the transitory nature of the
produced work, or even the job being inherently pointless (people cheerfully
do non-productive things all day)

The part about specialization is questionable as well. While there's not much
use for a casual architect, the modern, deep-specialization economy means it's
impossible to hire if you limit your search to people who made the life
decision at 12 that they wanted to be an packaging technology specialist.

This creates a system where it is not just acceptable but expected that
individuals will have various careers throughout life: What we do for a living
can't be a fundamental characteristic of our identity if it isn't what we were
doing a decade ago and isn't what we're likely to be doing a decade from now.

This is kind of a problem for the article author's defense of Marx because
it's the alienating, interchangeable nature of 21st century work that allows
the individual to increasingly have an existence outside of their job. Just
look at all the weirdos over at tumblr: many of these people have jobs that
are so non-identifying that they have to get together and brainstorm new
identities to label themselves with.

~~~
humanrebar
> the modern, deep-specialization economy means it's impossible to hire if you
> limit your search to people who made the life decision at 12 that they
> wanted to be an packaging technology specialist.

Cherry-picking that example, no, but I can cherry-pick counterexamples that at
least practically require early specialization: professional athlete, medical
doctor, admiral, and politician. Many of these specialized professions are not
coincidentally highly compensated.

Without getting caught up in details, I think it's fair to say some career
paths are also lifestyles and the result of years (or decades even) of goal-
oriented career choices.

But you're right that there's more choice than the article lets on. If career
variety is important to you, there are career paths that allow a lot of it
(like entrepreneurship, software engineering, and business management).

------
zeteo
> [Marx] thought we should abolish private property. People should not be
> allowed to own things.

I don't think that's accurate. Marxists want to abolish private property _of
the means of production_. So it's OK to have a house and car for your own use,
but not a factory where others work for you - because in such circumstances,
Marx thought, exploitation and dehumanization become inevitable. I'm not
saying I agree with this analysis, but in a world where Silicon Valley
executives conspire to depress wages and many people are stuck in "bullshit
jobs" it can't be completely disregarded either.

~~~
mason240
It's clear that a factory is a "means of production to be owned by the state,"
but everything is unclear. A car, a hammer - even the computer you are reading
this on can all be used as capital and lent to workers to apply their labor
to. Would all home computers be controlled the Marxists?

Marxism is system that only makes sense at the very highest of levels (like
the factory), but completely breaks down when looking at any kind of real
implementation.

Unlike computer science, where all levels of abstraction ultimately derive
from a solid base of boolean logic, there simply is no base to
Marxism/Socialism/Communism/Anarchism.

~~~
lamontcg
Its interesting that you immediately translated "means of production" in the
preceding comment to "means of production to be owned by the state".

There's other possibilities for "the workers owning the means of production"
that don't necessarily involve the state owning the means of production. You
can have the workers who do the actual work at the plant own the means of
production, instead.

Setting up a dichotomy between top-down heirarchial capitalism and top-down
heirarchial statism implicitly ignores any possible middle paths.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Setting up a dichotomy between top-down heirarchial capitalism and top-down
> heirarchial statism implicitly ignores any possible middle paths.

Arguably, "top-down heirarchical capitalism" and "top-down heirarchical
statism" aren't polar opposites, they're more adjacent neighbors -- there's a
reason that many non-Leninist Marxist call Soviet-style Communism "state
capitalism".

~~~
dllthomas
_' there's a reason that many non-Leninist Marxist call Soviet-style Communism
"state capitalism"'_

"No True Scotsman"?

I'm not trying to say that's all that it is, just that it's certainly a
potential explanation.

------
firstOrder
> He thought we should abolish private property. People should not be allowed
> to own things.

Marx had very little interest in discussing property or things. He called
focus on property and things "commodity fetishism". Marx talked about
relations of production - relations between people.

> It's going to war with human behaviour.

All humans lived communistically from the time of cave paintings, Venus
figurines, advanced tools etc. of 50,000 years ago, to 10,000 years ago.

Go back to the time of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE - Japan, Australia,
North America, Sub-Saharan Africa etc. are all still communistic hunter-
gatherer tribes. People in New Guinea were living in a more "advanced" mode of
production then people living 200 kilometers north of modern Stockholm.

If there was some genetic component of humans which made the recognition of
rented property, interest-lended money, profit-extracting capital etc. some
innate human feature, then we wouldn't have to be repeatedly told that how
production and relations of production organized themselves in the past two
centuries is normal, and any changes to that are "against human nature".
Unquestionable, repeated, "accepted wisdom" of man's nature has been part of
propaganda models for millennia - centuries ago priests and reverends would be
telling us it is obvious man is depraved, man is sinful, only saved by the
grace of god etc. When considered, it's obviously nonsense.

~~~
bcoates
Do we actually know anything about social structures in prehistory or is it
just an assumption that people behaved like modern-day isolated tribes?

~~~
firstOrder
The important concept is surplus. People do the work to feed themselves, plus
extra surplus effort to feed others. Obviously the tribe nurses children who
can not feed themselves, and perhaps older parents too weak to feed
themselves. Many class structures and relations of production possible in
farming societies are not possible in a band of 50 or so continually
travelling hunter-gatherers. We know some things about prehistoric bands,
especially what things were impossible for them to do.

------
atmosx
"The biggest crime the 60's and 70's European socialist movement, was the
failure to severely limit the average working hours" \- TechieChan

I know most people, especially in a neo-liberal western society, would never
give this a chance, but IMHO it's really life-changing. As _scarcity is a
virtue_ and many people still believe that worker's _productivity_ in the
secondary and primary economy sector is still of importance.

ps. I'm all for free-lancers working 24/7 if they choose too. But for things
housing/food/clothes/energy/internet/etc. 3 hours per 5 days a week should be
enough all over our planet.

~~~
twoodfin
_ps. I 'm all for free-lancers working 24/7 if they choose too. But for things
housing/food/clothes/energy/internet/etc. 3 hours per 5 days a week should be
enough all over our planet._

At my market wage rate, I absolutely could get
housing/food/clothes/energy/internet working 15 hours a week. But:

\- What I could get would not be nearly as nice as what I get for working
anywhere between 2-4x that per week, which is a tradeoff I am happy to make.

\- If culture or law made it impossible for me to work more than 15 hours a
week, my contributions to society would be immensely curtailed. I do what I do
because I'm damned good at it, and what I produce is of value to others (who
pay a fair price for it). If I started writing poetry or running more
marathons, I might produce some things for society I would not have produced
otherwise, but in the aggregate society would lose out.

If a 15 hour work week became mandatory, unemployment might drop, and wages
for those limited hours would likely rise, but the overall size of the
productive economy would be horrifyingly reduced.

~~~
im3w1l
But if you work 25/8, then I have to, too, to stand any chance in zero sum
games with you.

~~~
twoodfin
The whole point of my comment is that it's _not_ a zero sum game. Because most
of us work eight hours a day means there is a lot more stuff to go around.

~~~
im3w1l
Agreed. But my point is not that _it_ is a zero sum game. My point is that
_some things_ are zero sum games. And you will win those if you work harder.

------
coldtea
> _Few ideas have been more thoroughly discredited and rejected by history
> than those of Karl Marx._

Actually no. USSR and the "really existing socialism" states had little to do
with the theories of Karl Marx (besides the basic lip service paid to it).

If you want to discredit Marx's theories do it based on what HE wrote (that's
his theories), not what others did afterwards.

And arguments from economists that work as policy makers (instead of as
objective scientists) and whose models and proposed policies have failed
historically in every single case they were enforced do not count much.

~~~
dragonwriter
> USSR and the "really existing socialism" states had little to do with the
> theories of Karl Marx (besides the basic lip service paid to it).

Even in theory (leaving aside practice) there is a pretty big divergence both
in the approach prescribed by and prerequisites/target environment addressed
by Leninism from that of Marxism. Leninism was by its own terms, a system that
sought to acheive the _goals_ of Marxism, but adapted the means to an
environment which had not yet met the conditions Marx saw as essential. Marx
wrote about problems in the developed world of his time, and approaches to
correct them that built on the present condition of society in those developed
countries. Lenin sought to adapt that to address the conditions in a far less
developed country bypassing the kind of economic and social development which
Marx saw as setting the stage for the change he proposed.

You can't fairly criticize Marxist theory based on Leninist theory or
practice.

------
captainmuon
Marx != Marxism... There is a huge gap between Marx' writings and what
Marxists made of it. I guess most people agree that Marxism was bad. Not just
that it didn't work economically, but that it led to undesirable,
authoritarian societies. Problem is, Marx didn't advocate what was later
called Marxism. In fact, he famously said "je ne suis pas un marxiste" \- "I
am not a Marxist!".

That article is misleading and tendentious in many ways. I was going to write
a post debunking it, but I honestly didn't manage to get to the end. I found
it's just not worth getting worked up ("Someone's wrong on the Internet!").
Just some short ideas:

\- The author seems hung up on one aspect of Marx's thinking, the concept of
alienation. While it is an important concept for Marx, I think if you just
single out one aspect, you risk making a similar mistake to the Marxists (who
emphasized the expropriation of workers' surplus value, and the need to get
control over that surplus through class war).

\- People who most vocally criticize Marx usually haven't read him. I'm no fan
of the Soviet Union, but Marx doesn't advocate a state like that. His main
opus, the Kapital, is a theory of Captialism, not of Communism. Most
economists and many other academics don't use Marx nowadays, but not because
he is _wrong_ per se, but rather because his work-value theory does not have
much quantitative predictive power. You can't use it to calculate much, but
that wasn't his goal anyway. Rather, (as I'd describe it in modern terms) he
shows how from simple axioms you automatically get all the injustice and
crisis-proneness he criticizes in capitalism (a la: Assume there's a society
where most people work, get paid wages, and buy the products of their labor on
a open market.... BAM people who own the means of production get richer,
etc.). I personally was really surprised how relevant his writings still are
today.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Problem is, Marx didn't advocate what was later called Marxism.

There are many things that were later called Marxism, some of which Marx did
advocate, some of which he didn't (and, in the latter case, some of them are
arguably well-grounded in what Marx did specifically advocate and many of them
are directly opposed to what Marx advocated.)

> In fact, he famously said "je ne suis pas un marxiste" \- "I am not a
> Marxist!".

Actually, he wrote to a particular set of French "marxists" who had diverged
from his approach on a program for the particular situation in France on which
he had collaborated with them, that _if_ their view was "Marxism", then "what
is certain is that I myself am not a Marxist".

The context and condition are almost invariably left off by people who want to
claim that Marx rejected Marxism generally.

------
gatehouse
I can't tell if this is a parody site or not:
[http://www.philosophersmail.com/310114-relationships-
stewart...](http://www.philosophersmail.com/310114-relationships-stewart.php)

The superficial resemblance to the daily mail leads me to instantly discredit
the whole site.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
It's not out-and-out parody, more like halfway between parody and straight-out
serious. The idea is 'what if we presented serious topics in an accessible
way, with a tongue-in-cheek delivery'. It's Alain de Botton's latest project.

~~~
igravious
I should have guessed. Hence the prominent advertisment to buy his latest
philosophical offering, "The News, A User's Manual".

------
irremediable
> Frankly, the remedies Marx proposed for the ills of the world now sound a
> bit demented. He thought we should abolish private property. People should
> not be allowed to own things.

I was given to understand he didn't believe this at all! He believed that
people should not be allowed to own the means of production. He was fine with
people owning e.g. toothbrushes.

~~~
ely-s
Marxists, Anarchists, etc. often draw a line between ownership and possession.
e.g. You would own a factory or a piece of land, but you would possess a
toothbrush and your clothes. There is a subtle difference between them.

I think his idea is that if private property were abolished, the means of
production would not be owned.

~~~
irremediable
Well said. But I believe what you said validates my criticism. Marx didn't
plan to take away everyone's everything.

------
foobarqux
Chomsky on Marxism:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8GMidDRn2k](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8GMidDRn2k)

------
tdees40
This is why it's important to differentiate between Marx's preferred political
system (Communism) and the ideas of Marx more holistically (Marxism). Many of
Marx's ideas remain compelling ways to explain our modern world (alienation,
false consciousness, just to cite two), even if Marx's political ideas turned
out to be a disaster.

~~~
mseebach
The idea of false consciousness is one of the most misanthropic and illiberal
ideas of the 20th century. It "explains" why the masses disagree with your
"analysis" and thus shields you from having to confront the frightening
prospect that maybe the masses actually are better equipped for knowing what
they want and setting priorities for their own lives than you are.

------
crusso
The author makes a lot of excuses for Marx's philosophy based upon the times
in which he existed, ignoring the fact that The Age of Enlightenment had
already occurred. The Founding Fathers of the USA had already set the USA
experiment in motion, based upon the thoughts of Locke and Montesquieu - among
others.

There were already abundant answers to the problems that Marx was witnessing,
but rather than celebrate the liberty of the individual, Marx subjugated every
individual to the limitless needs and exigencies of the "masses".

Great, so a few of Marx's tenets out of context of his larger theme made some
sense. His context, though, was completely screwed up.

~~~
dragonwriter
> There were already abundant answers to the problems that Marx was witnessing

No, there weren't then and there aren't now. And, the answers that were later
adopted, in the US and the rest of the developed West, to partially _mitigate_
the problems Marx was witnessing were, in large part, a subset of those Marx
and Engels recommended in the Communist Manifesto as first steps. (And the
Enlightenment _preceded_ the development of the economic system that Marx was
criticizing -- and contributed to it -- it didn't solve it.)

~~~
crusso
Sorry, by "answers" I didn't mean final solutions to every problem. I don't
assume that there are answers to existence... not in the certainty of death
and taxes sense. I meant that there was a direction to go in that was far
superior to where they were. In programming terms, a superior local optimum
was already evident.

To what "first steps" are you referring?

------
alexeisadeski3
What the author describes are not the defining features of Marxism. Marxism is
a political philosophy the details of which we are all familiar.

Marx also had many insights into modern society, human psychology, and
history. Not all of his insights were incorrect - indeed there are precious
few humans who are cursed with uniformly incorrect insights. However, agreeing
with some of Marx's insights does not make you a Marxist.

This is the converse of "Hitler was a vegetarian, therefore vegetarianism is
evil" fallacy.

------
BrainInAJar
"He thought we should abolish private property. People should not be allowed
to own things."

No. that's just straight wrong. Property is revenue generating, it's not the
stuff you own. Marx wanted to abolish private ownership of the means of
production (ie, factories)

------
bayesianhorse
I think the most detrimental thing in communism (or socialism or whatever the
local variety) versus most other forms of government was the lack of risk
management. Wealth is alwas the end result of an exponential growth process.

But there is no growth without risk, and especially Mao has been guilty of all
sorts of bad ideas "tried out" on a grand scale, ignoring risks and just
aiming for the newest get-wealthy-quick scheme. That's why China today is
extremely conscious about their growth. Not too high, not too low.

The only way to achieve this risk-managed growth is through a large and
lucrative financial sector.

------
threepipeproblm
As someone who has read most everything Marx has written... no, I am not a
Marxist. And the fact that some of Marx's points about alienation and such
have become memes does not make me, or anyone else, Marxist.

~~~
captainmuon
Marx himself said "je ne suis pas un marxiste" \- "I am not a Marxist".

------
EthanHeilman
This article doesn't understand what Marxism is, many of the ideas represented
as "Marxism" were shared by many philosophers prior to, during and after
Marx's life. They don't in anyway define Marxism.

Why some people insist on referring to all leftist critiques of the status
quo/capitalism as Marxism and then complain about the intellectual babbage
attached to that term is beyond me.

------
FD3SA
There are many local maximums between pure socialism and pure capitalism.
Capitalism, in its purest form, is winner take all no holds barred
competition. Ruthless, dirty and vicious. Pure socialism is stagnation, with
no rewards for additional efforts beyond the bare minimum.

There are many countries that have realized this, and have implemented
capitalism's competitive force in a controlled, positive sum manner while
simultaneously leaving a generous safety net for those getting started or
recovering from failure.

However, I believe that in the past few decades, modern nations have had no
guiding principles other than economic growth. This begets a huge host of
problems, mainly resulting from parasitic and wasteful economic practices
which tend to be zero or negative sum when all externalities are accounted
for.

If we look closely at history, our guiding principles have always been based
on fear in the form of massive wars, whether waged or theoretical (WWI, WWII,
Cold War, etc.). Increasingly I've become convinced that in order to address
all of the failings of modern societies, we need to have national principles
based upon something other than pure economic performance and/or war.

I sincerely hope that someday, modern nations will adopt scientific research
as their guiding principle, and structure society around the continuous quest
for knowledge. Research would be the economic engine that drives growth, and
national spending would be based upon catalyzing scientific and technological
progress. Professional science would be the developed world's biggest
industry, which would facilitate implementations in private industry when
technologies mature. Universities, hacker spaces, and all academic
institutions would provide a plethora of training opportunities that would be
sponsored by national spending, ensuring a citizenry that would be incredibly
educated and willing to engage in research at all levels, from lab technicians
to principal investigators.

As such, there would always be a job available in the nation's scientific
infrastructure for every citizen at some level. The state would be the
employer of last resort, but would also allow opportunities for incredible
advancement. Furthermore, this would result in an extremely informed voter
base, with the time to participate in direct and/or representative democracy.

I see this as being an incredible opportunity going forward. As automation
proceeds to rapidly destroy middle and low class jobs, the entire concept of
employment will have to be reevaluated. Capital will eclipse labor in the
economic factors of production, leading to a necessity for people to find
another meaning in life other than just "jobs" for the sake of survival. We'll
need a guiding principle to structure our society around.

Thus, I humbly nominate the pursuit of science as our prime directive.

~~~
alexeisadeski3
_" I sincerely hope that modern nations will instead adopt scientific research
as their guiding principle, and structure society around the continuous quest
for knowledge."_

So, in other words, Marxism.

Imagine a society in which the state doesn't feel the urge to "structure
society" at all...

~~~
yk
Marxism is a society where there is no state, so it will not structure
society.

Lenin on the topic:

    
    
       It was solely against this kind of “abolition” of the state that
       Marx fought in refuting the anarchists! He did not at all oppose
       the view that the state would disappear when classes disappeared,
       or that it would be abolished when classes  were  abolished. What 
       he did oppose was the proposition that the workers should renounce
       the use of arms, organized violence, that is, the state, which is 
       to serve to "crush the resistance of the bourgeoisie". 
    

Source:
[http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch...](http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch04.htm#s2)

~~~
dragonwriter
Lenin's not exactly a reliable source where it comes to describing Marx (in
much the same way that the ocean is not exactly free of water), since he was
trying to sell a program radically divergent from Marx's under the banner of
Marxism.

~~~
yk
Actually I like to quote Lenin on this precisely because he is a vanguardist.
So the argument is essentially, that even the driest ocean is still pretty
wet.

------
veganarchocap
I felt slightly sick when I read that title.

~~~
hepek
You are being ignorant.

~~~
sxtxixtxcxh
i think we can assume "veganarchocap" talking about getting physically ill
being called a marxist is trolling.

~~~
veganarchocap
Yeah I was kinda trolling to be fair!

------
johngalt
I'm a marxist as much as I'm an astrologist. It's easy to make broad
statements like 'work should be meaningful'. Who would disagree with that? #4
might as well say "As a Libra you believe that specialization deadens the
soul".

What a laughable article.

------
ctdavies
Wow it's like no one has actually read Marx.

------
fiatpandas
Is "maker" culture Marxist?

~~~
dkuntz2
In some ways. There are also some anarchistic tendencies in "maker" culture,
like the idea of a Do-ocracy. The maker culture seems more a composite of
several different sources.

Unless you're trying to test the statement "because they make things they're
Marxists", in which case I have no answer.

~~~
dllthomas
It's a peaceful, cooperative reassertion of the workers of their rights to the
means of production. I think there are clearly some strains of Marxism it is
very well aligned with.

------
giantrobothead
I was never worried about being a Marxist.

------
pikachu_is_cool
I thought this was going to be about free software.

------
michaelochurch
I think I'm a neo-Marxist. Marxist materialism gives us the most accurate lens
into what human societies actually are: people either cooperating or competing
for resources. Culture and religion and politics mostly derive from that. On
the small scale, there is much about us as humans that is extra-economic; but,
on the larger scale, our operations and fluid mechanics come from economic
causes.

Like the OP, I don't buy into Marx's solution. I don't claim to know how to
build the perfect society, because the feedback cycle takes too long and the
costs of experimentation are very high. He diagnosed the problem perfectly.
Greed _is_ what is (at least, at risk of) killing us and the planet.

Artificial scarcity is also a cause of much misery, and I agree that it must
be struck down. The modern, technological world has no place for these
artificial scarcities. I probably sound repetitive when I rail against closed
allocation, but that's a perfect example of an artificial scarcity (in that
case, of ways for a person to distinguish herself and succeed) in all its
moronic and evil glory.

~~~
bokonist
"Greed is what is (at least, at risk of) killing us and the planet."

If you are going to get that general, why not say the core problem is that we
live in a universe where the core biological law is natural selection/survival
of the fittest? Ultimately, every biological entity survives and reproduces by
either growing the pie or stealing more of the pie. Human beings became
dominant in part because the big brains allowed for cooperation in growing the
pie, rather than just fighting each other for resources. Unfortunately, our
brains are limited and this did not scale beyond the Dunbar number. The
invention of rule or law and market economies helped scale this even further,
as these innovations made it so that you had to create some value to exchange,
rather than just stealing. But the success of those innovations just allowed
the species to grow even more numerous, and the systems far, far more complex,
and so market economies have broken down as so many people have found it more
profitable to game the system than to create real value (gaming the system
meaning everything from exploiting arcane financial structures, lobbying for
government favors, building web apps to exploit natural monopoly
opportunities, etc.)

What is the solution? My best take is that we need to refactor our laws, legal
system, and financial system in order to eliminate the opportunities for
complexity exploitation, and to re-incentivize value creating activities (such
as basic R&D).

------
maxjones1
ok, so can we now no longer expect comments on the internets from semi-
educated types whose every other word is socialist or marxist?

