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"Work hard, don't work hard — everyone gets the same," he says. "So people don't want to work." Many people point to this idea as the main weakness (or stupidi

by Jun8 15y ago

"Work hard, don't work hard — everyone gets the same," he says. "So people don't want to work." Many people point to this idea as the main weakness (or stupidity, depending on whom you speak) of Socialism as originally proposed by Marx. However, AFAIK (and I'm definitely not an expert on this), Marx saw socialism as a post-industrial step, to be developed in countries like German, France and the UK. On the other hand, his ideas were instituted mainly in mostly feudal countries like Russia and China. His model of human nature and projections for capitalistic growth were also totally off. Wikipedia says "Despite Marx's stress on critique of capitalism and discussion of the new communist society that should replace it, his explicit critique of capitalism is guarded, as he saw it as an improved society compared to the past ones (slavery and feudal)."

ryanmolden 15y ago
Popper talks quite a bit about this, and how Marx was mostly rebelling against a capitalism that we no longer would recognize, I.e. the cut-throat, robber baron, child laboring to an early grave type. His ideas definitely assumed a more enlightened populous where class camaraderie made people work hard for the good of all, he kind of assumed slackers wouldn't be tolerated or wouldn't exist. As taking advantage of others by making them do a disproportionate amount of the work while you got equal or greater benefit was a bourgeois disfunction that the proletariat would not engage in.
- dkarl 15y ago
  The term capitalism doesn't mean much when applied to today's world. Originally, its defining characteristic was that the economy was controlled by those who owned the means of production. The typical reader of this article works in front of a computer at a desk in an office block. He or she probably does not know who owns any of these things. It is quite likely that each is owned by someone different – a pension fund, a property company or a leasing business – none of whom is their employer. (http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/86667196-3afc-11e1-b7ba-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1k3j9oTCd http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/86667196-3afc-11e1-b7ba-00144...) The strange thing is, in school we still learn Marx's critique of the old capitalism. I guess it's because there's nothing politically sensitive about critiquing a system that doesn't exist anymore. Today's business world is run by a professional management class. Modern titans derive their authority and influence from their position in a hierarchy, not their ownership of capital. They have obtained these positions through their skills in organisational politics, in the traditional ways bishops and generals acquired positions in an ecclesiastical or military hierarchy. Not only is control completely different, but spreading ownership of the means of production to the masses has become a conservative cause, in the form of privatization of social security and other individual account schemes where citizens use tax-privileged savings accounts instead of services provided directly by the government.
- vidarh 15y ago
  His idea assumes a population that recognizes they're almost certainly not going to become part of the wealthy elite, and so who recognize that it is not in their interest to support said elite. While there is a hopeful optimism in a lot of early socialism, Marx scoffed at most of it, and spent a lot of his time criticising what he saw as untenable utopian forms of socialism that assumed altruism and selflessness. Instead, yes, he assumed slackers won't be tolerated. It is common for people to assume that communism would somehow mean people could just relax and not suffer consequences, but a large aspect of Marxism is to take away peoples ability to live off the work of others other than to the extent society can afford to do so as the result of excess wealth. The question of why a society following Marxist principles (as opposed to other forms of socialism) would choose to take the means of doing so away from one group of people just to let other people slack off is something that does not seem to occur to people. I would be inclined to think that if your immediate co-workers see direct impact on themselves based on whether or not you work, their interest in making sure you work would be greater.
tokenadult 15y ago
His model of human nature and projections for capitalistic growth were also totally off. Correct. The model of human nature proposed by Karl Marx was demonstrably incorrect, and the demonstration continues in the few countries that continue to proclaim allegiance to Marxist thought. An interesting fact about free-enterprise (Marx might say, "capitalist") economies is that they are based in part on the writings of Adam Smith in the book On the Wealth of Nations. But before Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, he first wrote a book called The Theory of Moral Sentiments, pondering what motivates human beings to behave morally. Smith had deeper insight into human nature even before he began writing about economics proper than Marx ever had.
- forensic 15y ago
  They aren't in competition. They both were geniuses. Smith did not advocate laissez-faire capitalism. He was against any kind of cartel, oligopoly, or monopoly, and wanted the state to be more powerful than corporations, not controlled by corporations. Marx was right about capitalism but wrong about incentives. Both of them should be drawn from in the creation of a next generation economic system.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - nextparadigms 15y ago
    How do you get a state that is "more powerful" than Corporations? I don't think Government size has anything to do with it. Are you referring to having many strong law enforcement agencies to threaten the corporations? I'd say the US Government already has that, and Corporations still seem to control it. And if you want to give China as an example, that's not an acceptable model. In a democracy, the best way for the Government to be more powerful than Corporations, is for the people themselves to have more direct power over the Government. The more the people loosen up their grip on the Government, the more one of the 2 things happen: 1. The Government becomes more powerful than both the people and the Corporations. 2. The Corporations become more powerful than the Government, who in turn is also more powerful than the people.
jacques_chester 15y ago
The root flaw in Marxism is the labour theory of value. It just doesn't lead to a workable theory of economics. That wasn't clear at the time he wrote Das Kapital, because the leading summation of economics was Smith (which I believe Marx worked from), and Smith got it wrong also. The concept of repeated crises of capitalism leading inexorably to socialism relies entirely on a slender reed that turns out to be broken. Nevertheless, whether socialism is, regardless of inevitability, possible, is a matter of hot debate. Mostly down to which side of the calculability/use-of-knowledge debate you fall on. Red Plenty is an interesting book for the days when it seemed as though the Soviet Union really was going to usher in heaven on earth. As for China, Mao: The Unknown Story is a terrifying account.
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  whether socialism is, regardless of inevitability, possible, is a matter of hot debate. I figure the only way to make it possible is through the ability to pick & choose members, and exile members. Not to be elitist, but rather to protect the community from those who would abuse it.
  - derleth 15y ago
    > I figure the only way to make it possible is through the ability to pick & choose members, and exile members. Then you have a dictatorial state socialism, also known as Stalinism, Maoism, and the Khmer Rouge. It's been done.
    - tomjen3 15y ago
      Not necessarily -- he may have a defense against the inevitable slide into corruptness that happened in those places. Of course this all depends on who gets to choose to exile members, and getting it to scale.
vidarh 15y ago
> "Work hard, don't work hard — everyone gets the same," he says. "So people don't want to work." > > Many people point to this idea as the main weakness (or stupidity, depending on whom you speak) of Socialism as originally proposed by Marx. But it is not a Marxist idea. In a society following Marxist principles, if you choose not to work, you would starve: You're not contributing according to your ability. The much mentioned from each according to ability, to each according to their means, is a social contract: If you don't contribute what you can, you should also not receive. In fact, the purpose of socialism (as opposed to communism) in the Marxist model is a transition where the working classes put in place measures to gradually deprive the capitalist classes of the means to live off capital and to take away their capital in order to subsume them into the working classes: If you don't want to work, as opposed to if you can't, you will eventually starve. The irony is that a lot of Western social democracies follow policies that Marx' likely would've written off as ploys a la Bismark's "state socialism": Ways of pacifying the working class, and potentially damaging by creating a chorus of people who oppose further socialization by creating systems full of attractive opportunities for those who don't want to work. This is beyond a lot of the early socialist demand for a right to work, rather than a right to welfare. A welfare state that pays people unemployment benefits without also putting them to work is petty-bourgeois, not Marxist socialism.
- Jun8 15y ago
  "If you don't contribute what you can..." The problem is that this is so hard to measure in practice. I think that in the absence of external motivators, people revert to their subsistence level of output, since they have no incentive to go beyond that.

by Jun8 15y ago

ryanmolden 15y ago

Popper talks quite a bit about this, and how Marx was mostly rebelling against a capitalism that we no longer would recognize, I.e. the cut-throat, robber baron, child laboring to an early grave type. His ideas definitely assumed a more enlightened populous where class camaraderie made people work hard for the good of all, he kind of assumed slackers wouldn't be tolerated or wouldn't exist. As taking advantage of others by making them do a disproportionate amount of the work while you got equal or greater benefit was a bourgeois disfunction that the proletariat would not engage in.

dkarl 15y ago
The term capitalism doesn't mean much when applied to today's world. Originally, its defining characteristic was that the economy was controlled by those who owned the means of production. The typical reader of this article works in front of a computer at a desk in an office block. He or she probably does not know who owns any of these things. It is quite likely that each is owned by someone different – a pension fund, a property company or a leasing business – none of whom is their employer. (http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/86667196-3afc-11e1-b7ba-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1k3j9oTCd http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/86667196-3afc-11e1-b7ba-00144...) The strange thing is, in school we still learn Marx's critique of the old capitalism. I guess it's because there's nothing politically sensitive about critiquing a system that doesn't exist anymore. Today's business world is run by a professional management class. Modern titans derive their authority and influence from their position in a hierarchy, not their ownership of capital. They have obtained these positions through their skills in organisational politics, in the traditional ways bishops and generals acquired positions in an ecclesiastical or military hierarchy. Not only is control completely different, but spreading ownership of the means of production to the masses has become a conservative cause, in the form of privatization of social security and other individual account schemes where citizens use tax-privileged savings accounts instead of services provided directly by the government.
vidarh 15y ago
His idea assumes a population that recognizes they're almost certainly not going to become part of the wealthy elite, and so who recognize that it is not in their interest to support said elite. While there is a hopeful optimism in a lot of early socialism, Marx scoffed at most of it, and spent a lot of his time criticising what he saw as untenable utopian forms of socialism that assumed altruism and selflessness. Instead, yes, he assumed slackers won't be tolerated. It is common for people to assume that communism would somehow mean people could just relax and not suffer consequences, but a large aspect of Marxism is to take away peoples ability to live off the work of others other than to the extent society can afford to do so as the result of excess wealth. The question of why a society following Marxist principles (as opposed to other forms of socialism) would choose to take the means of doing so away from one group of people just to let other people slack off is something that does not seem to occur to people. I would be inclined to think that if your immediate co-workers see direct impact on themselves based on whether or not you work, their interest in making sure you work would be greater.

tokenadult 15y ago

His model of human nature and projections for capitalistic growth were also totally off. Correct. The model of human nature proposed by Karl Marx was demonstrably incorrect, and the demonstration continues in the few countries that continue to proclaim allegiance to Marxist thought. An interesting fact about free-enterprise (Marx might say, "capitalist") economies is that they are based in part on the writings of Adam Smith in the book On the Wealth of Nations. But before Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, he first wrote a book called The Theory of Moral Sentiments, pondering what motivates human beings to behave morally. Smith had deeper insight into human nature even before he began writing about economics proper than Marx ever had.

forensic 15y ago
They aren't in competition. They both were geniuses. Smith did not advocate laissez-faire capitalism. He was against any kind of cartel, oligopoly, or monopoly, and wanted the state to be more powerful than corporations, not controlled by corporations. Marx was right about capitalism but wrong about incentives. Both of them should be drawn from in the creation of a next generation economic system.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  How do you get a state that is "more powerful" than Corporations? I don't think Government size has anything to do with it. Are you referring to having many strong law enforcement agencies to threaten the corporations? I'd say the US Government already has that, and Corporations still seem to control it. And if you want to give China as an example, that's not an acceptable model. In a democracy, the best way for the Government to be more powerful than Corporations, is for the people themselves to have more direct power over the Government. The more the people loosen up their grip on the Government, the more one of the 2 things happen: 1. The Government becomes more powerful than both the people and the Corporations. 2. The Corporations become more powerful than the Government, who in turn is also more powerful than the people.

jacques_chester 15y ago

The root flaw in Marxism is the labour theory of value. It just doesn't lead to a workable theory of economics. That wasn't clear at the time he wrote Das Kapital, because the leading summation of economics was Smith (which I believe Marx worked from), and Smith got it wrong also. The concept of repeated crises of capitalism leading inexorably to socialism relies entirely on a slender reed that turns out to be broken. Nevertheless, whether socialism is, regardless of inevitability, possible, is a matter of hot debate. Mostly down to which side of the calculability/use-of-knowledge debate you fall on. Red Plenty is an interesting book for the days when it seemed as though the Soviet Union really was going to usher in heaven on earth. As for China, Mao: The Unknown Story is a terrifying account.

sliverstorm 15y ago
whether socialism is, regardless of inevitability, possible, is a matter of hot debate. I figure the only way to make it possible is through the ability to pick & choose members, and exile members. Not to be elitist, but rather to protect the community from those who would abuse it.
- derleth 15y ago
  > I figure the only way to make it possible is through the ability to pick & choose members, and exile members. Then you have a dictatorial state socialism, also known as Stalinism, Maoism, and the Khmer Rouge. It's been done.
  - tomjen3 15y ago
    Not necessarily -- he may have a defense against the inevitable slide into corruptness that happened in those places. Of course this all depends on who gets to choose to exile members, and getting it to scale.

vidarh 15y ago

> "Work hard, don't work hard — everyone gets the same," he says. "So people don't want to work." > > Many people point to this idea as the main weakness (or stupidity, depending on whom you speak) of Socialism as originally proposed by Marx. But it is not a Marxist idea. In a society following Marxist principles, if you choose not to work, you would starve: You're not contributing according to your ability. The much mentioned from each according to ability, to each according to their means, is a social contract: If you don't contribute what you can, you should also not receive. In fact, the purpose of socialism (as opposed to communism) in the Marxist model is a transition where the working classes put in place measures to gradually deprive the capitalist classes of the means to live off capital and to take away their capital in order to subsume them into the working classes: If you don't want to work, as opposed to if you can't, you will eventually starve. The irony is that a lot of Western social democracies follow policies that Marx' likely would've written off as ploys a la Bismark's "state socialism": Ways of pacifying the working class, and potentially damaging by creating a chorus of people who oppose further socialization by creating systems full of attractive opportunities for those who don't want to work. This is beyond a lot of the early socialist demand for a right to work, rather than a right to welfare. A welfare state that pays people unemployment benefits without also putting them to work is petty-bourgeois, not Marxist socialism.

Jun8 15y ago
"If you don't contribute what you can..." The problem is that this is so hard to measure in practice. I think that in the absence of external motivators, people revert to their subsistence level of output, since they have no incentive to go beyond that.