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I am not saying that everything Marx/Engels ever said was correct. To reiterate. My specific point about Marx is this. Given capital, given private property –

I am not saying that everything Marx/Engels ever said was correct. To reiterate. My specific point about Marx is this. Given capital, given private property – his analysis/critique about for-profit capitalism is correct. And critique pertains to essentially free and fair markets, let alone markets distorted by too little or too much regulation or markets distorted by cartels, oligopolies, monopolies, cronyism, and so forth. Marx's point is that even when capitalism is operating in its _ideal_ state it is a system where wealth will inefficiently accrue to a minority (the rentier class) and where those who do not have a handle on the means of production will get progressively more exploited because -as your turn of phrase goes- profit. It's that simple. You counterpoints are meaningless in the face of the very well documented and ever-widening pay gap between workers on the bottom rungs of the ladder and those towards the top.

tim333 9y ago
I'll give you that without intervention the rentiers can get richer. However that can be countered by progressive taxation and similar and has been successfully including in the US up till the 60s or so. You can mostly fix it without going all Marxist and Marxism as such doesn't have a good record at fixing things. See The Black Book of Communism, Venezuela and the like. As an aside there are things that bug me about Marx and his style of reasoning. Both the hundreds of pages so its hard to say you're for or against. Also nearly all his statments are slightly off eg. "The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly." By his definition is you don't have rental income you are "proletarian" and so selling yourself hourly or daily. Which doesn't seem quite right - ok you may get a job but it's not quite like that. It slightly amazes and saddens me that people took this stuff seriously and it went on to cause so many deaths and do this day messes with clear thinking analyses of poverty and the like.
- igravious 9y ago
  Yup. I should have said `progressive' taxation in my earlier post, not `regressive' taxation. (I'm going to reply to myself to flag that.) In this we are in agreement. > I'll give you that without intervention the rentiers can get richer. This is a central claim of Marx! Those anti-Marx claim "it'll be okay because <some form of trickle-down economics>" or "you'll discourage entrepreneurs" or "taxes are theft!" or some other variant. What I'm trying to show is that you can agree with this part of Marx but reject his solution – state-run collectivisation or communism or whatever you want to call it. The trick is to not throw the baby out with the bath water. "The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly." Sell himself means sell his own toil, his own labo(u)r. If you are fortunate enough to have some form of rental income then your _capital_ is doing the work, ergo you are not part of the proletariat. I think that's pretty clear, no? Marxism != Communism Marxism != Anti-capitalist If you want for-profit capitalism to succeed you have to be partly Marxist, that's the irony given the way these terms have been bent out of shape. The fault-line of "property is theft!" from one side and "taxation is theft!" from the other to my mind illuminates the entire discussion. :)

tim333 9y ago

I'll give you that without intervention the rentiers can get richer. However that can be countered by progressive taxation and similar and has been successfully including in the US up till the 60s or so. You can mostly fix it without going all Marxist and Marxism as such doesn't have a good record at fixing things. See The Black Book of Communism, Venezuela and the like. As an aside there are things that bug me about Marx and his style of reasoning. Both the hundreds of pages so its hard to say you're for or against. Also nearly all his statments are slightly off eg. "The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly." By his definition is you don't have rental income you are "proletarian" and so selling yourself hourly or daily. Which doesn't seem quite right - ok you may get a job but it's not quite like that. It slightly amazes and saddens me that people took this stuff seriously and it went on to cause so many deaths and do this day messes with clear thinking analyses of poverty and the like.

igravious 9y ago
Yup. I should have said `progressive' taxation in my earlier post, not `regressive' taxation. (I'm going to reply to myself to flag that.) In this we are in agreement. > I'll give you that without intervention the rentiers can get richer. This is a central claim of Marx! Those anti-Marx claim "it'll be okay because <some form of trickle-down economics>" or "you'll discourage entrepreneurs" or "taxes are theft!" or some other variant. What I'm trying to show is that you can agree with this part of Marx but reject his solution – state-run collectivisation or communism or whatever you want to call it. The trick is to not throw the baby out with the bath water. "The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly." Sell himself means sell his own toil, his own labo(u)r. If you are fortunate enough to have some form of rental income then your _capital_ is doing the work, ergo you are not part of the proletariat. I think that's pretty clear, no? Marxism != Communism Marxism != Anti-capitalist If you want for-profit capitalism to succeed you have to be partly Marxist, that's the irony given the way these terms have been bent out of shape. The fault-line of "property is theft!" from one side and "taxation is theft!" from the other to my mind illuminates the entire discussion. :)