WI no Karl Marx

The world might be slightly better without Marx, but it's hard to know without fully considering the ramifications and consequences of his life as he led it in our timeline.

I can see it as worse. Nothing as strong to galvanise the poors and workers against abuses by robber-barons, by example. And the contercoups may be.. bad.
 
I can see it as worse. Nothing as strong to galvanise the poors and workers against abuses by robber-barons, by example. And the contercoups may be.. bad.

Conversely, the robber-barons figure out eventually on their own that relatively happy workers are more productive and themselves plausible consumers of goods.
 
Conversely, the robber-barons figure out eventually on their own that relatively happy workers are more productive and themselves plausible consumers of goods.

I doubt it. They needed shock and fear of that,one can argue. One can argue indeed the fear of socialism/communism made them realise this; without socialism/communism, they may continue the old business... untill something similar appears.

Anarchism maybe would rise, but this is an ideology that is without a state, and so, a more stronger project.,...
 
I doubt it. They needed shock and fear of that,one can argue. One can argue indeed the fear of socialism/communism made them realise this; without socialism/communism, they may continue the old business... untill something similar appears.

Anarchism maybe would rise, but this is an ideology that is without a state, and so, a more stronger project.,...

One could argue that it was already apparent that worn-out workers was bad for business. Your assumption is, to me, insulting to the collective business community.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
One could argue that it was already apparent that worn-out workers was bad for business. Your assumption is, to me, insulting to the collective business community.

That must be why the collective business community is busy wiping its ass with the universal declaration of human rights in much of the third world.

Also, prior to the soviet revolution, the dominant left in Europe was anarchist.
 
That must be why the collective business community is busy wiping its ass with the universal declaration of human rights in much of the third world.

Also, prior to the soviet revolution, the dominant left in Europe was anarchist.

Providing jobs in developing countries to set them on the course towards modernization respects human dignity.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
Providing jobs in developing countries to set them on the course towards modernization respects human dignity.

lol, okay. That's why they lobby for reduced worker rights and repress unionization efforts in blood while offering only starvation level wages. :rolleyes:

It's a pity only the soviet union realized it was morally bankrupt at the end of the cold war.
 
Yet, unexpected fuctors like the incredible expansion of the service sector and the white collar army (who are neither bourgeoisie nor proletariat in the proper sense of the terms), the exponential development of technologies that, while stealing some jobs (manual labor) also created new occupations (IT guys, web designers etc)

I think Marx covers extensification quite well, see the section on primitive accumulation at the end of Volume 1;
For the second see Marx's repeated stressing that proletarian relations are a social relation, not a cultural artefact. The vast white collar proletariat is very clearly a proletariat in terms of control over production, access to subsistence, alienation, productivity. Unless you mean in the sense "Only capable of selling their sons" in which case Marx's proletariat isn't a proletariat;
For the third see the fragment on the machines in Grundrisse.

Marx was aware of all these processes.

You may have supplied a good summary, but these examples are poorly chosen.

yours,
Sam R.
 
lol, okay. That's why they lobby for reduced worker rights and repress unionization efforts in blood while offering only starvation level wages. :rolleyes:

It's a pity only the soviet union realized it was morally bankrupt at the end of the cold war.

The hypocrisy of such answer indeed disgust me as well. And I am just a social democrat centrist.
 

Spengler

Banned
No real difference, somebody else would have come up with something just like Marxism. I really do dislike these "What if X philosopher didn't threads" Because the thing about philosophy is that anyone can come up with one. Also especially in the case of politics we have to rember that a person is not a island, their ideas do not just come from a void but are made by their experiences.
 
No real difference, somebody else would have come up with something just like Marxism. I really do dislike these "What if X philosopher didn't threads" Because the thing about philosophy is that anyone can come up with one. Also especially in the case of politics we have to rember that a person is not a island, their ideas do not just come from a void but are made by their experiences.

well, as everyone is different, it wont be an exact carbon copy thought, there will be ideological differences perhaps.
 
More center-left than purely "centrist", actually, and further left than either earlier in history.

Depend on how you see it.

Myself, I see it as the state and market in an equilibrum. And considering all in all, a state strong enough to control capitalism. But no communism instead.
I'm critical of the right, but I dont agree always on the left, so, does that make me that leaning left? Or I am an hypocrite? I dunno, but I dont think so.

Beside, the right is getting stronger and stronger here, so by pushing the left until an equilibrum is taken...

But anyway, wendell seems american, and there is such a bias against anything even center.


Also btw, technicaly, you can even have a right that is.. anti-capitalistic. Our religious right in Quebec was VERY quite so.
 
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