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> It found that there was actually widespread agreement in the UK over topics such as gender equality and climate change – often seen as culture war issues. I

> It found that there was actually widespread agreement in the UK over topics such as gender equality and climate change – often seen as culture war issues. I really don't think The Guardian understands what they're talking about here. The so called "culture war" is about Marxist ideology. The people denying climate change are fringe wackos of this tiny minority who fight culture wars.

vidarh 6y ago
The proportion in the UK who are any kind of Marxist is vanishingly small. The extremist pushing "culture wars" do like to argue it's about "Marxist ideology", but what they paint as Marxist rarely has anything whatsoever to do with Marxism. EDIT: It's fascinating to see the votes on this change without anyone even trying to make an argument to justify the claim it has to do with Marxism. I'd love to see one of those downvoters explain exactly how it has anything to do with Marxism. I'm not holding my breath.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  Jeremy Corbyn has praised Karl Marx as "a great economist", FWIW.
  - vidarh 6y ago
    And yet his policies are moderate enough that UK Labours 2019 program is outflanked on the left by the Norwegian conservative party on a number of issues. Corbyn is certainly left wing by US and UK standards, but has never been a Marxist, and is moderate by the standards of most of Europe. McDonnell on the other hand, could reasonably be described as Marxist.
  - Qwertious 6y ago
    Well, Marx was a big contributor to our view of economics. He sure as hell hasn't been obscure - he basically founded Marxian economics (not to be confused with Marxist politics). He had some pretty sharp ideas about the problems in his contemporary economic system that are still relevant today, even if he dropped the ball on predicting the best solution.
  - jacobion 6y ago
    Karl Marx WAS a great economist. Is this something one is no longer allowed to say without being smeared as an extremist?
    - stale2002 6y ago
      > Karl Marx WAS a great economist. He really was not. He was great at politics. He was great at taping into things that workers cared about. But his actual economics that he laid out, in Das Kapital? The actual mathmatical equations in it, and falsifiable predictions in that book? The labor theory of value? All pretty worthless. Basically no serious academic takes the labor theory of value seriously. It is non-sense. Heterodox economic theories are heterodox for a reason. That reason being that they are not reflective of reality.
      - throwawaygh 6y ago
        >> Karl Marx WAS a great economist. > He really was not. He was great at politics. Not in the governance sense (he wasn't a statesmen), so you must mean in the other sense ("activities within an organization that are aimed at improving someone's status or position"). But this is sort of a difference without a difference, right? For most of human history, people who were "great at X" were in truth at least as good at politics as the thing they're actually known for. Even e.g. Euclid was arguably a great geometer but an even greater politician. Hell, Pythagoras was literally a cult leader. With rare exceptions, your name isn't remembered by history unless you're good at politics. > Basically no serious academic takes the labor theory of value seriously. The labor theory of value is much older than Marx, and components of it are certainly taken seriously in management schools when talking about pricing services for example. Similarly, economists use components of other theories of value where it makes sense. I think it's more accurate to say that economics as a profession has moved on from these sorts of "generalizable theories of value" to give more nuanced analyses, which is quite different from saying that those theories proposed historically by Marx or Frisch or whoever have no influence. Anyways, can you define "serious academic" in a way that doesn't make this sentence tautological? There's no one who claims Das Kapital is the Bible of Economics, but the same is true for Wealth of Nations and basically any other historical text. That doesn't mean that Smith and Marx are irrelevant, though.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    Obviously he was that and a foundational social scientist. I'll do that and I'm almost certainly closer to being an ancap than you are.
- gampleman 6y ago
  A lot of the Scottish intellectuals I've talked to where pretty explicitly Marxist (including, but not limited to, my supervisor who had a poster of Lenin in his office). Also I think current SNP politics are pretty close to Marxism-Leninsim.
  - vidarh 6y ago
    Yes, you can find Marxists in the UK. That does not at all change what I wrote. The narrative of Marxism as some big scary bogeyman in UK politics is an alt-right trope. Suggesting the SNP, which is only moderately left wing even by UK standards, is close to Marxism-Leninism is equally ludicrous. Put another way: If Marxism had any prominent support in the UK, RLB would have been outflanked on the left in the Labour leadership elections, rather than losing to someone on her right.
  - arethuza 6y ago
    "Also I think current SNP politics are pretty close to Marxism-Leninsim." Care to share which policies those might be?
    - arethuza 6y ago
      It's not like the Socialist party in Scotland are fans of the SNP: https://scottishsocialistparty.org/?s=snp&submit=Search https://scottishsocialistparty.org/?s=snp&submit=Search

vidarh 6y ago

The proportion in the UK who are any kind of Marxist is vanishingly small. The extremist pushing "culture wars" do like to argue it's about "Marxist ideology", but what they paint as Marxist rarely has anything whatsoever to do with Marxism. EDIT: It's fascinating to see the votes on this change without anyone even trying to make an argument to justify the claim it has to do with Marxism. I'd love to see one of those downvoters explain exactly how it has anything to do with Marxism. I'm not holding my breath.

zozbot234 6y ago
Jeremy Corbyn has praised Karl Marx as "a great economist", FWIW.
- vidarh 6y ago
  And yet his policies are moderate enough that UK Labours 2019 program is outflanked on the left by the Norwegian conservative party on a number of issues. Corbyn is certainly left wing by US and UK standards, but has never been a Marxist, and is moderate by the standards of most of Europe. McDonnell on the other hand, could reasonably be described as Marxist.
- Qwertious 6y ago
  Well, Marx was a big contributor to our view of economics. He sure as hell hasn't been obscure - he basically founded Marxian economics (not to be confused with Marxist politics). He had some pretty sharp ideas about the problems in his contemporary economic system that are still relevant today, even if he dropped the ball on predicting the best solution.
- jacobion 6y ago
  Karl Marx WAS a great economist. Is this something one is no longer allowed to say without being smeared as an extremist?
  - stale2002 6y ago
    > Karl Marx WAS a great economist. He really was not. He was great at politics. He was great at taping into things that workers cared about. But his actual economics that he laid out, in Das Kapital? The actual mathmatical equations in it, and falsifiable predictions in that book? The labor theory of value? All pretty worthless. Basically no serious academic takes the labor theory of value seriously. It is non-sense. Heterodox economic theories are heterodox for a reason. That reason being that they are not reflective of reality.
    - throwawaygh 6y ago
      >> Karl Marx WAS a great economist. > He really was not. He was great at politics. Not in the governance sense (he wasn't a statesmen), so you must mean in the other sense ("activities within an organization that are aimed at improving someone's status or position"). But this is sort of a difference without a difference, right? For most of human history, people who were "great at X" were in truth at least as good at politics as the thing they're actually known for. Even e.g. Euclid was arguably a great geometer but an even greater politician. Hell, Pythagoras was literally a cult leader. With rare exceptions, your name isn't remembered by history unless you're good at politics. > Basically no serious academic takes the labor theory of value seriously. The labor theory of value is much older than Marx, and components of it are certainly taken seriously in management schools when talking about pricing services for example. Similarly, economists use components of other theories of value where it makes sense. I think it's more accurate to say that economics as a profession has moved on from these sorts of "generalizable theories of value" to give more nuanced analyses, which is quite different from saying that those theories proposed historically by Marx or Frisch or whoever have no influence. Anyways, can you define "serious academic" in a way that doesn't make this sentence tautological? There's no one who claims Das Kapital is the Bible of Economics, but the same is true for Wealth of Nations and basically any other historical text. That doesn't mean that Smith and Marx are irrelevant, though.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Obviously he was that and a foundational social scientist. I'll do that and I'm almost certainly closer to being an ancap than you are.
gampleman 6y ago
A lot of the Scottish intellectuals I've talked to where pretty explicitly Marxist (including, but not limited to, my supervisor who had a poster of Lenin in his office). Also I think current SNP politics are pretty close to Marxism-Leninsim.
- vidarh 6y ago
  Yes, you can find Marxists in the UK. That does not at all change what I wrote. The narrative of Marxism as some big scary bogeyman in UK politics is an alt-right trope. Suggesting the SNP, which is only moderately left wing even by UK standards, is close to Marxism-Leninism is equally ludicrous. Put another way: If Marxism had any prominent support in the UK, RLB would have been outflanked on the left in the Labour leadership elections, rather than losing to someone on her right.
- arethuza 6y ago
  "Also I think current SNP politics are pretty close to Marxism-Leninsim." Care to share which policies those might be?
  - arethuza 6y ago
    It's not like the Socialist party in Scotland are fans of the SNP: https://scottishsocialistparty.org/?s=snp&submit=Search https://scottishsocialistparty.org/?s=snp&submit=Search