Marx May Have Had a Point

Hitting the mainpage for the first time, Black Sabbath writes "While communism has been declared dead and buried (with a few stubborn exceptions), Karl Marx's diagnosis of capitalism's ills seem quite bang on the money. Harvard Business Review blogger Umair Haque lists where Marx may have been right." It's a pretty good read once you get past the author's three paragraph disclaimer that he is not a communist. The MIT news also ran a short interview discussing the economic trends in August this morning.

Comments

Attribution:

[pyrr]

--John Kenneth Galbraith

Re:Nothing to surprising

[NeutronCowboy]

It expects people to be people, not ants.

No. It expects people to be able to act rationally and in their long-term best interest. That's still not how people work.

Re:Nothing to surprising

[jpmorgan]

You're trying to argue that gravity falls up. It's a nice attempt, but ultimately moot, because employee owned companies do exist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_employee-owned_companies

Perhaps you should consider that the challenges you mention are not insurmountable.

Re:Marx was indeed, partly correct

[pyrr]

Please don't invent new definitions for socialism. There is absolutely nothing in that economic structure that requires it to be a democracy. You're blending and confusing economic systems with political systems. The USSR's economic system was quite socialist, even if their government system was a totalitarian, single-party limited republic. The key hallmarks of socialism are a command economy in which the government owns the means of production.

Re:Nothing to surprising

[Archangel Michael]

It was voluntary, not state mandated. Communes and Kibbutz in Israel also function well, and are "communistic". However people are kicked out for not doing what they are able, and everyone is responsible for everyone else. The problem with state mandated communism is that it necessarily is abusive of power, or sufficiently weak that it doesn't work.

Expectations of work, and the condition of expulsion of those that are able, but refuse to work allow for Communes and Kibbutzes to function. A large state cannot function in that manner.