Article

2005-08-30 Europe

Karl Marx Was Really a Free-Marketeer (really!), Says Attali

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Posted by phil_b 2005-08-30 08:36|| || Front Page|| [1 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 I think this guy read the Cliff's Notes version of Marx. Although Marx's theory of history does say that capitalism is a stage on the way to communism, his theory of economics -- the labor theory of value -- is built from the ground up as a critique of capitalism as inherently exploitive. He may or may not have considered capitalism to be an improvement over feudalism, but he most certainly loathed capitalism in its 19th-century manifestation. As many critics of marxism have pointed out, however, the labor theory of value is bogus, in that it does not recognize profit as the entrepreneur's salary for risk-taking. Moreover, the information on which Marx based his theories was out of date by the time he got around to writing Das Kapital.

As to this line -- "Like his subject, Attali is something of an overachiever" -- it reveals the writer's ignorance more than anything. Marx spent most of his life sponging off of Engels, cheated on his wife, exploited the help, and pissed off everybody who tried to work with him. The fact that some Frenchman is trying to resurrect Marx's discredited theories is an indictment of France's educational system more than anything else.

Posted by Jonathan">Jonathan 2005-08-30 12:25|| 2005-08-30 12:25|| Front Page Top

#2 Actually, Karl Marx was a commie scumbag. But that's not the PC version.

Posted by Chris W.">Chris W. 2005-08-30 21:05|| 2005-08-30 21:05|| Front Page Top

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