I feel like I’m missing something big here. Marx seems to be thought of by many as a God-like-heroic-founding-father-of-20th-century-thought kinda-guy; yet I am too lazy and/or stupid to really understand why.
Aside from whinge about capitalism, did Marx do or say anything else which fundamentally altered or improved western patterns of cultural thought and philosophy? I am led to believe that he did, but after some half-hearted light-reading on the matter I am still none-the-wiser…
He emphasized the notion that history is primarily based on economics, which has proved to be a valuable insight.
Communism had a huge effect on the last 50+ years of world history. The space race, for example, had a dramatic positive impact on modern life.
Instant weather reports, GPS, satellite radio can all be credited, in small part, to Marx.
Well, there’s a great deal to be said about ‘whinging about capitalism’, frankly.
Karl Marx wrote a great deal more than The Communist Manifesto, though I’d bet not one person in a thousand could tell me what any of those other writings are (and, to be honest, I think fewer than one in a hundred could tell me even THAT he wrote The Manifesto).
For quite a bit of his life and writings, Marx focused on the downstream effects of Smith’s Invisible Hand analogy. Marx showed how such a large-scale system could easily brush aside the poor and powerless. He believed deeply that such power could be countered through collective action. Well and good, and not something that could be easily disputed, honestly.
Where Marx is failed, however, is in both his followers and his opponents. During the 20th century (and to a certain extent the 19th) those who read and agreed with Marx - after they achieved power - proceeded to scare the living hell out of everybody by becoming tyrannical overlords such as Stalin and Mao (as well as other, smaller players on the world stage) who advocate revolution worldwide, regardless of the cost in human lives and goals.
On the other hand, Marx’s opponents have spent more than 100 years demonizing him and his ideas for their own agendas. By using Marxism as a whipping boy - aiding by Marx’s followers in re: scaring the hell out of everyone - various political and philosophical leaders have been able to secure their own positions. It has - to a certain extent - done no little harm to see unfettered capitalism run rampant than it has done no little harm to see unfettered communism run rampant.
For me? I’d say that Marx would have been horrified to see the excesses done in his name and angered to see the excesses done in opposition to his ideas. Because, in the end, that’s all they were. Marx believed that large organizations - governments and corporations - would oppress the poor and working class if the organizations could get away with it. This is, to me, indisputable. However, Marx failed to really see how a middle path could be charted that would allow for economic growth and the increase of average wealth while still affording protection for all through a strong safety net.
This is, after all, a debate still ongoing. Though to my thinking, it’s one that is trending towards a middle ground (thank goodness) where some form of European social democracy will eventually become the norm in western societies.
But to say that Marx had little impact on the world following his writings? That’s silly. He wasn’t alone in his positions - he was a part of a larger debate and philosophical movement during his time writing in Europe - but for better or worse people know him and at least one of his writings (though again, I’d best most haven’t read it). It’s not too strong to say that most of the western political movements on the 20th century: The rise of Americanism, the New Deal and the Great Society, social democracy, Stalinism, Maoism and even Nazism, developed as a response to or in opposition to people who read and followed or rejected Marx.
Sure - I see how Marx, and the manifestation of his theories as 20th century communism, has had a massive knock-on effect in that sense. I suppose what I meant was “How has Karl Max influenced our ways of thought and of seeing the world now, in the sense of him being a great, influential thinker?” He is arguably one of the most famous social and political commentators of the 20th century, yet I’m not much sure of what he represents apart from “down with the bourgeoisie!”
Does the modern left-wing owe its fundamental identity to Marx?
Groucho was a master of the snappy comeback.
…what?
You just said it yourself. The idea that a person’s economic class is a fundamental part of who they are–as or more important than their religion or social class–is due in large part to Marx. It’s hard to see now, because it’s become common sense. Marx was developing a strand of social thinking that began well before him, of course, but he pushed it further and clarified it.
Marx actually did a fair job of describing conditions in his own time and place. His mistake was to then assume that those conditions were universal and eternal.
But as 1914 demonstrated, economic class wasn’t as important as Marxism thought it was. Class solidarity disappeared in the wind and nationality turned out to be the unifying factor of the twentieth century. Even the societies that embraced communism often found they couldn’t overcome nationalist divides.
Failure.
Just as there’s a great deal to be said about that goddamn O2, corroding everything around us.
And here I entered the thread to say, “those glasses with the mustache.” But now I’ll fondly recall the t-shirt showing the brothers three, with the slogan, “Sure I’m a Marxist!”
Well, I did find the string ‘communi’ in Groucho’s wiki page. Of course when I typed the ‘s’ I got the ‘no results’ tone.
Right Here Waiting showed the world how exciting Adult Contemporary music could be. There’s no better legacy than that.
If you mean the other Marx, then I see him as part of that violent transition period between medieval feudalism and the modern era - which might have been necessary in some unpleasant way at that time, but is probably best forgotten now.
MY EARS! MY EARS! Why did you make me listen to that?
Marx’s legacy is pervasive and profoundly negative.
First, you need to read ‘The Communistic Manifesto’, it’s online and isn’t too long. On one hand it has a biting analysis of the downside of capitalism. However, I read it for the first time recently and commented online about the sharp analysis of capitalism, and someone responded that Adam Smith had done a better job 100(?) years prior.
Once you get past the analysis of capitalism you get to the vision for the future and the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. Here the concepts have a quality similar to those of a comic book, complete fantasy and totally without substance. How can anyone take a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ seriously for even a minute? It is not possible.
So, what is missing, Marxism is clearly something more than a dated critique of capitalism and a comic book vision of the future. What is it? It is a rational for the destruction of existing society, Marxism provides the mindless slogans masquerading as ideas that provide a cover for a revolutionary element to destroy society.
And, in communist Russia, we’ve seen the results. A government that massacred its own citizens in the millions, with estimates running for 20 million to 60 million.
The cant of Marxism is that the masses will become a revolutionary force motivated by Marxism and will act to overthow the capitalist government. But that has never happened, the Russian revolution was a top down revolution that turned out to be a disaster for the Russian peasant.
The Russians were never able to export their revolution to the industrialized societies as Marx envisioned. They realized that the proletariat was bound to the existing governments by culture and tradition, to the extent that Marxist rhetoric could never get through to them.
German Marxists recognized that they only way a communist revolution could take place in an industrialized country was if the existing cultural institutions of the society were destroyed first. What they developed is called cultural Marxism, and the group that developed it is known as the Frankfurt school. Wiki has an informative article.
The pillars of western society are the family and Christianity. So, these are the primary targets of cultural Marxists. With the rise of the Nazis the Frankfurt school left Germany and moved to Columbia Univ. in NY.
Cultural Marxists play significant roles in every movement in the US that is an attack on the traditional values of the country. You can figure out for yourself what these movements are.
:dubious:
The title actually is “The Communist Manifesto”.
Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
And BTW–the Wiki article on the Manifesto says nothing about the rest of that stuff.
People often forget that he had a profound effect on methodology. His materialist conception of human history brought a new scientific rigor to the study of history and effectively laid the groundwork for the modern study of sociology, anthropology, political science, and economics. All social sciences are indebted to him.
In essence, what Marx declared is that societies have the equivalent of a subconscious; a set of real reasons for having the values they do, often held unwittingly, which are ultimately based on “material necessity”- how society has to be structured in order for life to carry on. This basic idea, that the tenets of society can be deconstructed as to true motive, is alive and well today even among non-Marxists. Jared Diamond for example uses a similar technique when analyzing societies of the past and present.
The biggest legacy of Marx today is that industrial societies have in fact reformed from the Dickensian/ robber baron capitalism of the 19th century- quite possibly as the result of conscious awareness of Marxist and Socialist doctrine. If Marx and his communist contemporaries had never put their analyses down on paper, something like the worker’s revolution might actually have eventually come to pass.