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If Karl Marx came back to life and saw the success of capitalism, and the failure of communism, what would he say?

Feux Follets says

Strategist says

If Karl Marx came back to life and saw the success of capitalism, and the failure of communism, what would he say?

Perhaps he might be inclined to be in agreement with the following:

“Creating Wealth” Through Debt: The West’s Finance-Capitalist Road

Actually, Marx would look at the wealthy lifestyle an average person in capitalist countries enjoy, versus the poverty an average person in communist countries enjoy, he would scratch his head, and say "Oh shit"

ohomen171 says

They led us close to nuclear annihilation in 1962 and 1983.

The same establishment trying to overthrow Trump caused the near Nuke annihilation in 1962. Kennedy was more like Trump than any President after him.
Trump is doing what Kennedy and his Brothers tried to do. But got their heads blown off trying. Trump knows who and what to look out for now. That's why Liberal but hurt Jackasses write books calling him Paranoid because he wont roll through the town square with the top down, that Brennen and Clapper set up for him.

Kennedy kept his cool while his Establishment Rothschild Generals were demanding that he push the Nuke button.
The Commie in this instance was on the phone with Kennedy putting the War flame out. Nikita Khrushchev was not the cause of the crisis, Kennedy's war Mongering Generals were. They killed him for not being a team player and being disobedient against the NWO.

The Liberals squashed Kennedy's real legacy with Socialist Bullshit by misrepresenting his policies and speeches. Kennedy was far greater man than the "Ask what you can do for your country." mantra the Liberals harped on.

HEYYOU says

What would Marx say when he sees all the Republicans on their Socialist govt. handouts & subsidies?
"Republicans are my true teat suckers."
What's so sad is that working Republicans are paying taxes for their sorry ass brethren.

Wow. I didn't even know Welfare Queens were Republicans.

Strategist says

Wow. I didn't even know Welfare Queens were Republicans.

That's nothing I heard yesterday by lefty on the radio that Hugo Chavez wasn't really a socialist from the left when asked why socialism failed Venezuela.

RC2006 says

Strategist says

Wow. I didn't even know Welfare Queens were Republicans.

That's nothing I heard yesterday by lefty on the radio that Hugo Chavez wasn't really a socialist from the left when asked why socialism failed Venezuela.

ROFL. They keep fine tuning what socialism is. It still fails.

ohomen171 says

#Karl Marx Little noticed is that Karl Marx was born 200 years ago. His writings led to revolutions and wars that killed hundreds of millions. They caused a social upheaval that affected literally billions of people. They led us close to nuclear annihilation in 1962 and 1983. They haunt us in North Korea today.

But when did he die?

Feux has a point. A philosopher may expound on the unknowables, and come up with theories and ideas, but the implementation of those ideas is always the responsibility of those in charge. An idea can be hard to kill, but honestly, if Marx didn’t write it, someone else would have. Communism is such a sophomoric idea, it’s purely inevitable that someone would write about it sooner or later. Or did we all suppose that nobody but an 18th century intellectual Jew could have come up with the idea that the government could somehow own and manage all sources of production? Sure, it was supposed to be “the people” owning such production, but that quickly morphs into the government, and then “the elite” shortly thereafter. Then when they mismanage things, they have to quiet their critics. Cue the mass murder of millions, yadayadayada...

1. There are only two types of government: Limited Government (which respects individual rights and therefore has regular peaceful power transitions) vs. (theoretically) Unlimited Government (which the leader can't afford to leave peacefully therefore attracts violent overthrow). "Democracy"/"Republic"/"Monarchy" are only the front/formality. Whereas US Article Of Confederation / Constitution (with the Bill of Rights) worked out a semblance of Limited Government, what Marx' "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" proposes is guaranteed to produce Unlimited Government, which of course only lasts a relatively short time till it is violently over-thrown, and attracts violent overthrow and mutual predatory behavior among the population during its existence. Marx' "Dilectic Materialism" is a religion serving his proposed Dictatorship in the same way that a traditional state religion would serve a theocracy . . . in fact, tend to work in the same sort of societies accustomed to promotion through "education"/brain-washing instead of social mobility via market competition.

2. The entire Marxian economics is based on obsolete superstition. Marx' economics was based on David Ricardo's Labor Theory of Value (i.e. a good's value is calculated from how much labor is put into it). After Marx published the first volume of his Das Kapital based on the previous Ricardian misconception, Austrian economist Carl Menger introduced the concept of Marginal Value and Subjective Value into the study of economics, finally explaining why an ounce of gold is far more valuable than an ounce of iron, despite iron being much more useful to society than gold, and why a liter of air is nearly worthless despite the crucial importance of air to human life: value is not calculated on the entirety of a commodity, but on the incremental unit of it: incremental liter of air is of little value because there are plenty liters of free air nearby. Menger also explained the difference between value vs. price, and the subjective nature of value/utility: two parties agreeing to a trade are actually not agreeing on the value of an item, but only the price point for carrying out the exchange: the seller deeming the value of the good as less than the agreed price but the buyer seeing the value of the good as being more than the agreed price; they have to differ from each (overlapping) sufficiently to cover transaction cost (tax, transportation, communication and marketing cost) in order for the transaction to take place at all. Because value is subjective in the newly updated economic understanding (unlike the previous Ricardian objective value system based on labor), Marx' entire theory on "Surplus Value of labor" was instantly obsolete. Marx was never able to finish subsequent volumes of Das Kapital due to this obvious intellectual contradiction. Engles later collated Marx' notes into publishing volume 2 and volume 3 after Marx' death, and offered prize to anyone who could round the square peg reconciling the contradiction, but to no avail.

3. Marx' linear progressive model of world economic history (from primitive society to slavery society to feudal society to capitalist society, linearly one time as human history, and forward project to socialism and communism society as the "inevitable end state") is also obsolete superstition. Ancient Rome had insurance (for shipping, life and property), share-holding corporations, and banking (both merchant banking and investment banking) before even the 2nd Punic War (218BC); that's long before Marx' Feudal Stage in European history, in fact barely into his "Slavery Stage"; how can a Marxist explain all those advanced institutions/"super-structure" of "Capitalism Stage" exist in a "Slavery Stage" society more than 2000 years ago? They can't, according to Marxian Material Determinism. In reality, there are only two alternating phases of human society: one phase is when productivity growth far out-pacing the existing rent-seekers (usually government tax collectors and their sub-contractors), that's when ancient Roman capitalistic market economy and modern capitalistic market economy take place (as well as Hrappen capitalistic market economy some 1500 years before even ancient Romans in building a city-wide indoor plumbing system, which did not exist in western Europe (or even the world) after Roman collapse until nearly 1500 years later in 19th century); the other phase is productivity growth barely keeping up with existing the appetite of existing rent-seekers, that's both feudalism and socialist/communist state, often punctuated by wars and internal purges whenever productivity growth falls behind the appetite of existing rent seekers. The sophistication of a capitalistic market economy is what brings forth the market demand and organizational finesse to build city-wide indoor plumbing systems, every 1500 years or so in human history.

4. What Marxism advocates is actually primitivism. Abolishing private property ownership is essentially pushing the timeline back to before the original agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago, just before the very dawn of human civilization. Without private ownership, people would not work hard or invest in capital improvement (in land, seed storage or in flock of animal). Every time farming in common on a scale larger than family/clan scale, the result has been disaster. It's not just the 100+ million people that starved to death in the 20th century under communist regimes, but even the May Flower landing in Plymouth saw more than half its original population starving to death in the first year due to the policy to farm in communal common; subsequently they had to divide up the land into household plots, and what followed was a good harvest and the first Thanksgiving! What Marx dreamed of as "end state" communism may well have some unexpected predictive power to the individual unfortunately enough to be caught up in it: "to each his desire, and from each his ability" indeed becomes reality when a person dies: to each his desire (which is nil) and from each his ability (which is also nil). Communism is essentially a Death Cult.

5. One fascinating aspect of Marxism is its intrinsic self-contradiction: Marx' dilectic materialistic "scientific history" of human history postulates that communism will arrive, and can neither be delayed nor accelerated by individual human action; so why did he and his followers waste time on revolutionary activities then? My suspicion is that they were working for money and pussy. Marx was certainly very popular with women, who seem to have a penchant for worshiping the ostensibly powerful; serving a predestined-victorious revolution makes the unemployable-"intellectuals"/Taliban ("student" in local language) appear purposeful and potentially future-powerful. His material determinism was tantamount to religious revelation/promise in an allegedly atheistic age (French revolutionaries started enforcing atheism around the time when Marx was born); he knocked up his household maid while living with his wife and children. It wasn't clear how he (or Engles) was funded. In fact, most 19th century socialist/communist revolutionaries had no clear source of reliable income of their own. We know that Lenin was funded by German military intelligence and western bankers intent on overthrowing the existing Russian government. It wouldn't be surprising if Marx and his fellow socialist revolutionaries were "controlled opposition" / bought-and-paid-for-terrorists funded by big financial interests.

Feux Follets says

Marx was correct, it would seem, when he wrote that capitalism keeps the working class poor.

Wrong. Capitalistic market economy was what lifted Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, Irish immigrants fleeing famine, Italian immigrants fleeing poverty, Vietnamese/Korean/Chinese immigrants fleeing wars and poverty, and even black immigrants from Caribbean and Africa itself, out of poverty within a generation after arriving in the US. "Intersectional" identity politics and welfare state OTOH have condemned many native-born Americans to life on a new slave plantation / dependency.

Feux Follets says

He was also spot-on about capital’s inherent instability. There is some validity to the joke that “Marxists have predicted correctly 12 of the last three financial crises.”

Recession and the replacement of existing inefficient enterprises by new and more efficient enterprises are what make capitalistic market economy work! Socialistic central planning is what kept the eastern bloc making 1940's cars well into the 1980's, while those old car models had been replaced by much newer and more advanced models in the West. Guess what happened to the old models in the West? They were put through liquidation sales!

Feux Follets says

Marx’s reputation has made a startling comeback, however, at times in unexpected circles.

There is nothing unexpected about good-for-nothing academics and propaganda organs prostituting themselves promoting central planning and safe-guarding of entrenched monopoly/oligopolies. Marx himself and his fellow 19th century "revolutionaries" were classic examples of bought-and-paid-for Taliban ("student" in local language) terrorists of their time, just like Lenin was a stooge funded by German military intelligence and Western bankers.

When a society becomes prosperous with productivity growth far outpacing existing rent-seekers, it goes through the "Capitalistic Stage"; then parents send their kids to schools in hopes of their own kids gaining a leg up on other people's kids. Guess what happens in the schools? The kids get their egos massively enlarged, while being taught either useless/counter-factual knowledge or so many of them being taught the same thing that the market value of the knowledge they learn plummet! The kids would never be able to achieve the level of success/prosperity that they were misled to expect when entering the institutions of higher learning. When attending such institutions is expensive (priced by rent seekers), the graduating students are inevitably disappointed and/or have to prostitute them to whoever would pay them to commit "revolutionary" terrorism. It's no different from the Madrassas of today producing Talibans/ISIS terrorists, 19th century Russian universities churning out Raskolnikovs, Lenins and Stalins, 18th century French universities churning out Robspierres (followed by German universities churning out Marx and Engles). Back around 400BC, ancient Greek capitalistic market economy led to the original Academy and Plato's first utopia of a Communist State (ruled by the Philosopher King).

Capitalistic market economy success does produce its own grave diggers, but they are not the workers but the useless/unemployable intellectuals like Marx and Taliban ("students"), who are all too willing and eager to prostitute themselves to any/all half-baked "revolutionary" cause, usually funded by the top 0.01% in order to destroy the next 1-5%, so that the remaining 95-99% have far less choices but have to sell themselves to the top 0.01%.