I’m honestly not sure what there is to disagree with. There has been no quantitative evidence supporting it. “Things should cost based on labor” is a nice thought for laborers, but it’s completely unrealistic. Nobody is going to pay twice as much for something because one manufacturer used a really shitty process that took twice as many man hours.
There’s a reason the “criticisms” section of the wiki is one of the largest and links to a full article on it. It’s a religion, not an evidence-driven theory. Prescriptive, not descriptive.
I suppose we would agree to disagree if you believe in ideas not grounded in reality (a.k.a. backed by empirical evidence).
Is it a total coincidence that you bring this up responding to a user with the name Emma_Goldman?
Anyway, I definitely second your point. I wonder if “Capital in the 21st Century” will be relevant for the entire century (although doubtlessly won’t be as consequential as Marx’s series).
Hah, no, seeing the username is a factor in pushing me to make the comment. I feel as though many books tend to be far less wide ranging, because they take up a smaller view; Piketty's book (going from what I'm seeing on the descriptions, I haven't read it yet) seems to be limited in scope, and less polemical. But those aren't matters of its relevance. So I might venture to say that if we will see a book as consequential as Marx's, its author will see with revolutionary (forgive the pun) clarity right to the most abstract core of their object. In the modern era, there are only three widely regarded as having done so with force: Marx, Nietzche and Freud. I'm still waiting to see what the post-modern era brings out. Who will do to economics today what Marx did to political economy and sociology in the 19th century?
That's a good point, but it's worth noting that Marx wrote Capital with the help of Engel's patronage. Journalism was not his livelihood, ultimately. And it was before the wide-ranging, academic professionalisation of the twentieth century. Had Karl Marx been born today, he would almost certainly have become an academic.
Journalism was literally his only livelihood. He was a journalist/editor years before he even conceived of the theories that spawned Capital, and he did it for the rest of his life.
His first newspaper was actually shut down precisely because of his journalism on the question of the rights of poor to gather wood in forests owned by the crown and nobles. He went on to write for at least 3 other papers/journals that I know of, one of which was american and his work was directly on the American Civil war
If you read Gareth Stedman Jones' biography of Marx, it's very clear that there was a persisting shortfall between whatever income Marx acquired via journalism - which was, in any case, fluctuating - and the outgoings of his family. He depended upon regular support from Engels, among others.
oh for sure. I've read a couple of collections of his correspondence, specifically with Engels and its replete with pleas for money. That being said, his only real job, his only job, from university til his death was journalism, and he did quite a bit of it and absolutely relied on it for income along with Engels (and others) donations. Like, journalism makes up close to 3(?) volumes of his collected works.
