Opinion of Karl Marx

[Vosem]

HP and overrated; one wants to say that he would not have approved of the future uses of his ideas but his reaction to 1871 suggests that he well might have. What he wrote that was useful was not original -- J.S. Mill wrote about the tragedy of commons before Das Kapital, and the idea of materialist predictions of the future is in Malthus -- and what was original was not useful.

I wonder about the extent that he was actually a world-historical figure; revolutionary movements which seem obviously 'Marxist' in retrospect, like the Taiping (or even 1792), were perfectly capable of arising in total ignorance of his ideas. (Marx himself might've believed this, too, as a believer in materialism.)

That said, kind of an entertaining writer and the best that he's written is a fun read.

[Vosem]

Overall HP.

I don't think he was generally evil or so, indeed identified problems with excessive capitalism, but his proposed "cures" were questionable all too often.

The big flaw with Marx was that he was good at identifying problems and extremely short on developing detailed 'cures' to those problems. His later acolytes stepped into the breach with... um... mixed results, but those by and large can't be laid at the feet of Marx the man.

He identified a good system (capitalism) and decided that it was a problem.

It’s worth bearing in mind that Marx didn’t consider capitalism to be a problem in and of itself. He was actually surprisingly complementary of it in certain writings - he considered it a necessary stage in the upward progress of humanity that would soon be replaced by socialism (a further advance), a stance that marks him out from some other socialist thinkers of the time (Fourier) who regarded capitalism and its accoutrements (trade, investment) as bad in and of themselves.

One could argue that the 21st century version of capitalism, at least in Western democracies, would be considered socialism in 1840s year, and capitalism accordingly did evolve as marks wanted. Perhaps Marxism - leninism was a schism that missed the point of Marx's teachings?

There are lots of Marx quotes supporting violent revolution (or saying that violence is the only way to accomplish a proletarian revolution -- which was interestingly proven incorrect in 1989). You should really read some of the early Bolsheviks on this matter.

That also said, you are not the first person to suggest something like "the Revolution has already happened". Industrial workers uniting in anti-government unions and overthrowing hostile authoritarian governments simultaneously around the world has in fact already happened, in 1989-1992; what Marx got wrong was that they ended up demanding liberal capitalism and an end to communism forever.

[Vosem]

That also said, you are not the first person to suggest something like "the Revolution has already happened". Industrial workers uniting in anti-government unions and overthrowing hostile authoritarian governments simultaneously around the world has in fact already happened, in 1989-1992; what Marx got wrong was that they ended up demanding liberal capitalism and an end to communism forever.

Believe it or not, there was a brief shining moment when Solidarity hadn't yet started opportunistically courting Reagan and Thatcher to have The Pressure Of The West on their side, and even then plenty of them weren't too chuffed about it. Not to mention that not every Eastern Bloc regime fell like that, of course!

The subsequent history of democratic Poland and virtually every memoir or political statement from that period suggests they were in fact quite chuffed (and Reagan and Thatcher were popularly elected leaders with enormous mandates). That said, fair point on not every Eastern Bloc revolution happening through union activity -- but they all fell as a consequence of the initial Polish revolution (extending to regimes quite far afield supported by Soviet activity like Mongolia or Congo-Brazzaville), which was itself accomplished by industrial workers. It's close enough to 'world revolution caused by labor militancy' that it seems quite plausible to suggest that was it, and the circumstances obviously raise the question of 'what would a militant global movement of industrial workers actually want'? Economic liberalism seems, in fact, like the most plausible answer to this.

[Vosem]

Overall HP.

I don't think he was generally evil or so, indeed identified problems with excessive capitalism, but his proposed "cures" were questionable all too often.

The big flaw with Marx was that he was good at identifying problems and extremely short on developing detailed 'cures' to those problems. His later acolytes stepped into the breach with... um... mixed results, but those by and large can't be laid at the feet of Marx the man.

He identified a good system (capitalism) and decided that it was a problem.

Oh let's go back to slavery, child labour and 14 hour long work days because half of US conservatives jerk themselves off on that thought...

WERE TALKING ABOUT 19TH CENTURY DUDE.

Really if i had one wish i could make true now, it would be to send you back to Europe anno 1850-1860 as an average working class person employed in some factory. Really curious to know how you would feel after a month.

Obviously worse before all of the economic growth enabled by those factories. Do you want people 170 years from now to live better than we do by a similar magnitude, though?