Was Marx Right?(blogs.hbr.org)
blogs.hbr.org
Was Marx Right?
http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/2011/09/was_marx_right.html
4 comments
I don't think it's fair to compare Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto to the quatrains of Nostradamus.
Fair enough... I wasn't really trying to compare the two, just using a pointedly over-the-top example to illustrate a point. And the Nostradamus stuff is something that everyone is familiar with. And it's the first thing that came to mind. :-)
Communism IS the perfect society. Everyone working for the betterment of everyone else, of society as a whole. NO selfishness, NO greed, NO evil. However if a single person does something selfish, the entire system falls apart.
In this world, it doesn't take very long to find that one selfish person, and I'd argue it's harder to find someone who won't eventually do something selfish, intentional or not, and bring the system down.
So of course Marx was right, in a perfect world that isn't ours, he's right. But in our world, we simply can't live up to those ideals so we have to work for a system that better accommodates how society actually is. Right now, that's government-regulated Capitalism. If someone can find a better one, I'm all ears.
In this world, it doesn't take very long to find that one selfish person, and I'd argue it's harder to find someone who won't eventually do something selfish, intentional or not, and bring the system down.
So of course Marx was right, in a perfect world that isn't ours, he's right. But in our world, we simply can't live up to those ideals so we have to work for a system that better accommodates how society actually is. Right now, that's government-regulated Capitalism. If someone can find a better one, I'm all ears.
I've lived in communism, and something that one should not forget is that communism is the home of the mediocrity. The things that pushed the society forward and from wich resulted a multiple field development were not communist at all.
This is a strange discussion. The topic of this article is not communism but Marx's predictions that industrial capitalism would become unsustainable. The author clearly states he does not see communism as the solution.
Are there issues with our current economic and political situation? Yes. Do we need Marx to fix them? I personally say "no." We need to think hard about what the proper role of government is, create a truly free market, and then allow whatever individuals, organizations, collectives, etc. that emerge, to layer on top of that base and build the social structures that they see fit. IMO, of course.