Marx for dummies

by John Wed Apr 19, 2006 13:13

Marx was surely a profound thinker who won legions of supporters around the world. But his predictions have not withstood the test of time. Although capitalist markets have changed over the past 150 years, competition has not devolved into monopoly. Real wages have risen and profit rates have not declined. Nor has a reserve army of the unemployed developed. We do have bouts with the business cycle, but more and more economists believe that significant recessions and depressions may be more the unintended result of state intervention (through monetary policy carried out by central banks and government policies on taxation and spending) and less an inherent feature of markets as such.

Socialist revolutions, to be sure, have occurred throughout the world, but never where Marx's theory predicted—in the most advanced capitalist countries. On the contrary, socialist revolts have occurred in poor, so-called Third World countries. Most troubling to present-day Marxism is the ongoing collapse of socialism. Revolutions in socialist countries today are against socialism and for free markets. In practice, socialism has failed to create the nonalienated, self-managed, and fully planned society. Real-world socialism in the twentieth century failed to emancipate the masses. In most cases it merely led to new forms of statism, domination, and abuse of power.

Marx's theory of value, his philosophy of human nature, and his claims to have uncovered the laws of history fit together to offer a complex, yet grand vision of a new world order. If the first three-quarters of the twentieth century provided a testing ground for that vision, the end of the century demonstrates its truly utopian nature and ultimate unworkability.

by chris Thu Apr 20, 2006 16:56

One point from the post against marxism. Capitalist apologists would have us believe that monopolism has not occured but in fact the very opposite is the case, take USA for instance 3 large automobile manufacturers dominate the market. Myriad types of ownership have evolved since marx wrote which hide the monoploistic nature of capitalism today the 65000 multinationals which exist today in the global economy own far more businesses than 65000, the fact that the companies all have a nomianally independent existence does not alter the fact that they run as one global company. If any of Marx's analyses can be said to have stood the test of the last 150 years it's that competition leads to monopoly.

Lastly, Marx makes no assumptions that need to be meet for his anlaysis of capitalism to hold, capitalism (private ownership, the market, supply and demand, etc) merely have to be operating in reality for Marx's analysis to stand. In contradistinction to this for the neo-classical economic model to work (the model by which the overwhelming majority of economists would and do use in reality) requires a myriad of assumptions such as perfect competion (which implies no costs for entering and exiting the market, all firms to be price takers from the marketplace ie no company having more market power than another) and market clearing (that all available resources that are supplied are demanded by the market and the economy will come to rest at equilibrium). The two assumptions ive mentioned are just two out of maybe 10 or more, but these two are especially important and both never apply in reality, unemployment automatically means market clearing cannot be occuring, while the example of the car manufacturers in the usa shows the lie behind perfect competiont.

by beeatch Thu Apr 20, 2006 23:00

profound marxist theory also easy for newcomers:

http://www.gegenstandpunkt.com/english/en_index.html

by w. Thu Apr 20, 2006 23:12

There's a good, easy to digest, introduction to marx book by "Rius".

by hs Thu Apr 20, 2006 23:35

...But i would say it was Lenin who really developed the idea of an organised leadership or a subjective element beyond general class conciousness. On the point of revolutions in less economically advanced nations, this was no suprise as it's often the weakest chain that breaks first. Trotsky developed this idea very well. The point is though is that a communist society would have to push ahead of capitalist societies in economic as well as democratic terms to survive. Although less economically developed countries can make huge leaps initially, without the support of more developed parts of the world with education, industrialisation , defence and trading partners it would be difficult to hold out. For this reason communists have generally seen the more economically advanced nations the most likely to create a sustainable revolution, just as the economic changes made the capitalist revolutions possible.

by John Fri Apr 21, 2006 11:53

The Manifesto's Message is: Civil War This hypothesis is really the essence and sum of the Manifesto which is not a call to thought, butand this should never be forgottena call to arms. The striking (and reprehensible) thesis of the Manifesto is that democratic societies are not really different in kind from the aristocratic and slave societies that required revolutions to overthrow. Despite surface appearances, despite the fact that in contrast to all previous societies, democracy makes the people "sovereign"democratic capitalism is "unmasked" by Marx as an "oppressive" and tyrannical society like all the rest, and therefore requires extra-legal and violent means to liberate its victims from its yoke. That is why those who have been inspired by the Manifesto have declared war on the liberal societies of the West and have spilled so much blood and spread so much misery in our time.

article continues@ http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=1152
Eds Note: Again please refrain from c&p long articles that can be easily linked to

by Topper Fri Apr 21, 2006 14:59

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID...=1152

Nice cut and paste job, John - saves you the trouble of having to do your own thinking. But seeing as this feeble attack on Marx is written by David Horowitz, an extreme-right fanatic and an apologist for tyranny and mass murder around the globe, most people of sense will take it with a pinch of salt. Every gangster, tyrant and terrorist who slaughtered innocent people in the name of the free market could be sure of support from Horowitz - Pinochet, Suharto, Somoza, Saddam Hussein (when he was "our" thug), the Contras, Robert D'Aubisson and the Salvadorean junta, the apartheid regime in South Africa, Renamo and Unita etc. etc.

Unlike Horowitz, Marx did not have a track record of supporting mass murder, and he gave his support to all the freedom struggles of his time - the democratic revolutions of 1848, the Chartist movement in Britain, the anti-slavery struggle in the United States (just to address one of the many lies in the article above - far from saying that democratic capitalism was no better than earlier systems like slavery, Marx and Engels campaigned in support of the Union side in Britain, at a time when Britain's political elite was strongly pro-Confederate).

The Horowitz article cut and pasted above is a shameless collection of lies. I don't have the time to write a detailed rebuttal of it, but I'd recommend anyone who's curious to have a look around the Front Page website and you'll soon get a sense of how dishonest and fanatical Horowitz and his cronies are. It's also quite entertaining (the laughs are strictly unintentional, but you'll enjoy it all the same - the last time I checked, they had Bruce Springsteen fingered as an enemy of America).

by Topper Fri Apr 21, 2006 15:58

Man, just spent half an hour wandering around the Front Page site myself, it's an endless source of treasures. With articles like "The sick mind of Noam Chomsky" how can you go wrong?

by phm Fri Apr 21, 2006 20:06

Of course Marx is for 'dummies' - all the rest of us have moved on.

by hs Sat Apr 22, 2006 20:46

Well you could write off everything marx has contributed to political thought, science, history and sociology, you could write off his critic of capitalism, his contribution to economics his contribution to the concept of historical materialism and even throw out the theory of alienation while your at it. But it wouldn't stop capitalism going through boom and bust, it wouldn't change the nature of class society and the inevitable struggle that goes between the 'have's' and 'have not's' of this world.

by phm Sun Apr 23, 2006 11:56

No, but Marx and his theories have absolutely nothing positive to contribute to the solution of any of these problems.

It is rare in the history of mankind that any theory has been empirically tested in so many of its manifestations as Marxism. It is also rare to find any theory so conclusively debunked by empirical experience as Marxism. Mao, Lenin, Julius Neyrere, Mugabe, Kim il Jong, Enver Hoxha, the lot, bought nothing but human misery to millions of people.

People all over the world have discovered that economic and personal freedom are indivisible, and when given the freedom to chose their own governance always choose some varient of social-capitalist democracy. Free people may put extensive controls on the ownership of some strategic resources and utilities (oil, railways etc.), but they always insist that the core economy which regulates most commercial discourse is on the social-market model.