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Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844
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Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844
Part 1
Karl Marx in his well known Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (which were never published in his lifetime) Marx, in what could be regarded as a prophetic vision of the sort of commercial, advertisers' world we have to suffer today, expanded on the point about the pursuit of money becomes the main aim of life in private property society. Economics is not about being correct or incorrect, it’s about being beneficial by describing what an economy will do, and in that regard, Marx has been both. There are of course the disasters of the communist and socialist states, a trail of abject poverty in its application, However, there is also the fact that Marxian economics are still used as complementary theories to this day.
Marx managed to form a coherent set of ideas based on the merging of ideas by among others his friend Engels, by philosopher Hegel, political philosopher Vicon, and economist David Ricardo. But it’s important to remember that Marx is largely about ideas, questions that needed to be asked at that time, and his works feature little scientific discipline. His theories are still a popular analytical tool to this day. In economics, however, very few to nearly none of the influential economists practice Marxian economics, nor call themselves Marxists, and many former Marxian economists have since changed their economic beliefs. It’s therefore not very controversial to say that Karl Marx’s influence on economics alone has largely been reduced to a complimentary position, even the Marxists from for example the Frankfurt school have largely supplemented Marx with new theories, and it remains questionable whether they really follow Karl Marx or rather have taken his ideas into a different direction ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"gpt3x7qB","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Su-ping, 2008)","plainCitation":"(Su-ping, 2008)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":1469,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/jsvqEXt1/items/MT85VJPK"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/jsvqEXt1/items/MT85VJPK"],"itemData":{"id":1469,"type":"article-journal","title":"Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844: The First Sign of Conservation Culture [J]","container-title":"Academic Exchange","volume":"6","source":"Google Scholar","title-short":"Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844","author":[{"family":"Su-ping","given":"X. U."}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2008"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Su-ping, 2008). There’s thus very little that remains of orthodox Marxian economics, the labor theory of value, for example, is the sine qua non of Marxian economics, and has been since disproven by the efficiency of other economic theories. Marx’s belief that factory machines were the real enemy of the workers, but just before book one of Das Kapital was published the Marginalist school of economics published their proof that capital investment introduced technical innovation into its products and production, and that it wasn’t possible to introduce technical innovation without. Hence why for example the USSR started to lag behind in technology, as did North Korea which still looks like the cold war never ended. Marx abandoned his works after book one and Engels himself published book two and three based on Marx’s notes.
The most beneficial thing Marx did for us today was inspired movements such as the social democrats that rose out of Marx’s works, and have assisted in creating the welfare state that had Marxian characteristics in France, England, but most importantly Germany under the conservative Bismarck. Marx was right about capitalism, he largely wasn’t, and very little of what he said about its future is still beneficial in an economic environment where economists seek to describe how economies behave, rather than how they ought to behave ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"fPsRS15J","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Su-ping, 2008)","plainCitation":"(Su-ping, 2008)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":1469,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/jsvqEXt1/items/MT85VJPK"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/jsvqEXt1/items/MT85VJPK"],"itemData":{"id":1469,"type":"article-journal","title":"Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844: The First Sign of Conservation Culture [J]","container-title":"Academic Exchange","volume":"6","source":"Google Scholar","title-short":"Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844","author":[{"family":"Su-ping","given":"X. U."}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2008"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Su-ping, 2008). We can spend all day talking about where he was right and where he was wrong, but Marx spend a lot of time predicting outcomes, but never finished his work nor wanted to work on book four which would explain his own economic system. But Marx lives on, and his analytical outlook on capitalist economics does too.
Part 2
The ideas reflected by Karl Marx in economic and Philosophical Manuscripts 1844 proposes that business owners (capitalists) exploited the ‘surplus value’ of their workers/laborer’s and that exploitation is was the profit business owners (capitalists) made off the unpaid labor of others. It’s clear that Marx believed all economic value was rooted in labor. (In his day this would almost exclusively be manual labor). So, for instance, a worker is paid $10 to make 10 “widgets” in an hour. So, after an hour the worker produces $10 worth of widgets but the capitalist/business owners sell the widgets for $15. So, if the owner is paying the worker $10 but is making $15 there is a $5 profit being made for the business owner. Marx believed that extra $5 belonged to the worker and that the owner was clearly stealing from the worker. Marx believed the worker was shafted in the transaction and because the worker needs a job, he can’t do anything about being exploited. Maybe it is convincing for someone who doesn’t understand how business works and Marx really didn’t understand business or even labor. Marx basically got a free ride from Engels while he wrote his stuff. Engels inherited his own family’s wealth thanks to a business they had in England.
Marx erroneously believed that all economic value is the result of labor and not much else. Marx believed that all goods in an economy have static and ‘objective’ value-based pretty much exclusively on how much labor was put into it. Marx had his own theory of value, labor theory of value. Marx wasn’t the only one to propose a labor theory of value. Some economists before him proposed their own labor theories of value and it’s likely that Marx borrowed ideas from them. Ironically in Marx’s critique of capital he almost totally neglected capital value at least in the production process. Thus based on Marx’s view of value tied to only labor he couldn’t or wouldn’t see the value added by an owner/investor in terms of capital and why that little $5 profit for the owner might be perfectly justifiable based on the work the capitalist/owner did to not only bring the good to market but also created the job for the worker in the first place and did not merely ‘exploit’ the worker. Marx also completely ignored the consumer side of the equation believing that consumers were merely deterministic and programmed to trade for things based on their ‘class.’ So, he didn’t see that value is actually determined by the consumers (not the laborer or even the capitalist/owner) and that value is subjective to each and every individual consumer and can’t be quantified objectively.
Marx also proposed the idea of ‘historical materialism’ as a ‘scientific’ way to explain social and economic relations between people. It was borrowed from the Hegelian theory of ‘thesis, antithesis, synthesis.’ When the thesis which is the current way of doing things meets the anti-thesis or the objections to the status quo there comes conflict. The conflict turns into revolution and a solution (synthesis) is ushered in or new way of doing things ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"auzBqiDp","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Su-ping, 2008)","plainCitation":"(Su-ping, 2008)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":1469,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/jsvqEXt1/items/MT85VJPK"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/jsvqEXt1/items/MT85VJPK"],"itemData":{"id":1469,"type":"article-journal","title":"Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844: The First Sign of Conservation Culture [J]","container-title":"Academic Exchange","volume":"6","source":"Google Scholar","title-short":"Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844","author":[{"family":"Su-ping","given":"X. U."}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2008"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Su-ping, 2008). Marx believed this was repeated like deterministic cycle throughout history and capitalism was the synthesis from the conflicts caused by feudalism. Marx proposed that socialism would be the solution to capitalism, in the same way, being as a superior solution. However, history didn’t work out that way. Socialism and its synthesis Communism didn’t take root in capitalist nations as Marx predicted but rather in the feudal monarchy of Russia and now Russia is capitalist coming from socialism in the past breaking the deterministic predictions of Marx yet Marx is still seen as a good analyst of society and economics.
Part 3
Economics is not about being correct or incorrect, it’s about being beneficial by describing what an economy will do, and in that regard, Marx has been both. There are of course the disasters of the communist and socialist states, a trail of abject poverty in its application, but there is also the fact that Marxian economics are still used as complementary theories to this day. Marx managed to form a coherent set of ideas based on the merging of ideas by among others his friend Engels, by philosopher Hegel, political philosopher Vico, and economist David Ricardo. But it’s important to remember that Marx is largely about ideas, questions that needed to be asked at that time, and his works feature little scientific discipline. His theories are still a popular analytical tool to this day. In economics, however, very few to nearly none of the influential economists practice Marxian economics, nor call themselves Marxists, and many former Marxian economists have since changed their economic beliefs. It’s therefore not very controversial to say that Karl Marx’s influence on economics alone has largely been reduced to a complimentary position, even the Marxists from for example the Frankfurt school have largely supplemented Marx with new theories, and it remains questionable whether they really follow Karl Marx or rather have taken his ideas into a different direction. There’s thus very little that remains of orthodox Marxian economics, the labor theory of value, for example, is the sine qua non of Marxian economics, and has been since disproven by the efficiency of other economic theories. In my opinion, Marx will have greater impact on the future of human social psychology than global politics. He has tried to explain something fundamental about human nature… about the subtle (very subtle) differences between greed and self-preservation, as it is played out in labor relationships and in group dynamics.
References
ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Su-ping, X. U. (2008). Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844: The First Sign of Conservation Culture [J]. Academic Exchange, 6.
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