
Labour is right–Karl Marx has a lot to teach today’s politicians - doener
http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21721916-shadow-chancellors-comment-provoked-scorn-yet-marx-becomes-more-relevant-day-labour
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CriticalSection
> The problem with Marx is not that his analysis is nonsensical, as Mr Gauke
> maintains, but that his solution was far worse than the disease.

What solution did Marx propose? In the afterword of Capital, Marx notes "The
Paris Revue Positiviste reproaches me in that...[I] — imagine! — confine
myself to the mere critical analysis of actual facts, instead of writing
recipes (Comtist ones?) for the cook-shops of the future".

Also Marx wasn't worried that CEOs were paid well as The Economist and
"shareholder advocates" seems to be. At least that would be paid to someone
who showed up for work. Marx was more concerned in noting the dividend checks
that went out quarterly, if joint-stock company dividend checks went out
quarterly in those days.

The Economist is being indirect in stating Marx's concerns. I'd guess more out
of ignorance than malice. Even the first chapter of Capital is famously a hard
slog to get through. I doubt the young Economist author made it through Anti-
Dühring.

More importantly, Marx thought the various contradictions of capitalist
production would lead to economic crises that the world saw in the 1930s
(outside the USSR, whose economy was booming at the time). Eventually, the
companies which are too big to fail really would fail. Capitalism's taxpayer
bailouts of big business that worked in 2008 will in some future crisis _not_
work, according to Marxian thought.

He also noted how various world economies and societies were swept aside by
new ones over the past ten millennia - hunter-gatherer bands for slave
societies, slave societies for feudal societies, feudal societies for
capitalist societies. In the red flags and worker's councils of the Paris
Commune, he saw the hazy, nascent harbinger of the social relations and forces
of production of those cook-shops of the future.

~~~
crdoconnor
>What solution did Marx propose?

He didn't, really. His proposals were pretty vague. 99% of what he wrote was a
(pretty spot on) critique of capitalism.

Needless to say most of the propaganda attacks on his ideas are based upon
guilt by association.

~~~
dragonwriter
> > What solution did Marx propose?

> He didn't, really. His proposals were pretty vague. 99% of what he wrote was
> a (pretty spot on) critique of capitalism.

 _The Communist Manifesto_ was fairly detailed and prescriptive. It's true
that _Capital_ was mostly description and critique of capitalism, but that's
not all Marx wrote.

> Needless to say most of the propaganda attacks on his ideas are based upon
> guilt by association.

Specifically, most are based on association with Leninist vanguardism, which
is a fairly radical departure from Marxism prescriptively.

