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

Point by point deconstruction

[roman_mir]

Immiseration. Marx claimed that capitalism would immiserate workers..... (America's median wage has been stagnant for roughly 40 years.) In macro terms, labor's share of income has plummeted, while the lion's share of growth has accrued to those at the very top.

Obviously the author is not paying attention to what happened 40-45 years ago, namely defaulting on the promise to pay real money for federal reserve notes, destruction of currency, inflation, growth of government based on destruction of currency, capital flight and creation of more monopolies, due to increase of gov't size and thus regulations, which leads to creation of super-incomes for those on the very top of the ladder, but destroys competition and subsequently destroys the economy. Of-course wages are stagnant in this depression, which is combined with inflation.

This has nothing to do with anything Marx was talking about.

Crisis. As workers were paid less and less, capitalism would be prone to chronic, perpetual crises of overproduction

- ?? :) OVERPRODUCTION? ::))))) IN USA?? :)))

OK, this is just ridiculous on its face. USA has 53 Billion/Month trade deficit. USA has overconsumption based on inflation and debt but it has no over-production at all. Once China stops subsidizing the US consumer, US consumer will stop consuming, as there will be nothing to consume.

for they wouldn't have the means to purchase or invest in enough goods to keep the economy humming.

- In 19 century USA, the production was growing immensely, while consumption was also growing even though there was actual deflation (contraction of money supply due to gold being money).

Stagnation. Here's Marx's most controversial â" and most curious â" prediction. That as economies stagnated, real rates of profit would fall.

- there is NOTHING controversial about this. This is true on its face value and if taken separately out of any context. As economy stagnates, profits must fall.

Of-course profits ARE falling, as all of the inflation is wiping out any real profits, and whatever profits are made by super-banks etc., that's all government propped up via further currency destruction.

Alienation. As workers were divorced from the output of their labor, Marx claimed, their sense of self-determination dwindled, alienating them from a sense of meaning, purpose, and fulfillment.

- it's called specialization, which eventually is replaced with automation. Free market capitalism solves this type of problem by automation, where people used to spend all the time doing the same manual or mental task over and over again, free market capitalism solves this by increased efficiency through investments into new types of tools, eventually automating all of the repetitive tasks away. As to feeling satisfaction with ones own work - this is best rewarded in capitalism and it's definitely shunned upon with unionized approach to work.

Unions do not like to reward performance, they reward seniority.

The other part of the problem is government making it increasingly difficult for anybody to start their own business that competes with established monopolies, that government creates, maintains, protects, bails out and stimulates and taxes for. Try and start your own business and see how that works out for you in this over-regulated, overtaxed market, which also will not let you have business credit due to the fact that gov't destroys value of money and savings and makes it impossible to get meaningful credit and all the money goes into government bonds - this is by design.

False consciousness. According to Marx, one of the most pernicious aspects of industrial age capitalism was that the proles wouldn't even know they were being exploited â" and might even celebrate the very factors behind thei