most people agree that we need to
improve our economic system
somehow yet we're also often keen to
dismiss the ideas of capitalism's most
famous and ambitious critic
karl marx this isn't very surprising
in practice his political and economic
ideas have been used to design
disastrously planned economies and nasty
dictatorships
nevertheless we shouldn't reject marx
too quickly
we ought to see him as a guide whose
diagnosis of capitalism's ills
helps us to navigate towards a more
promising future
capitalism is going to have to be
reformed and marx's analyses
are going to be part of any answer
marx was born in 1818 in trier in
germany
soon he became involved with the
communist party a tiny group of
intellectuals
advocating for the overthrow of the
class system and the abolition of
private property
he worked as a journalist and had to
flee germany eventually settling in
london
marx wrote an enormous number of books
and articles sometimes with his friend
friedrich engels
mostly marx wrote about capitalism the
type of economy that dominates the
western world
it was in his day still getting going
and marx was one of its most intelligent
and perceptive critics
these were some of the problems he
identified with it
modern work is alienated one of marx's
greatest insights
is that work can be one of the sources
of our greatest joys
but in order to be fulfilled at work
marx wrote that workers need to
see themselves in the objects they have
created
think of the person who built this chair
it's straightforward
strong honest and elegant it's an
example of how at its best
labor offers us a chance to externalize
what's good inside us
but this is increasingly rare in the
modern world part of the problem is that
modern
work is incredibly specialized
specialized jobs make the modern economy
highly efficient
but they also mean that it's seldom
possible for any one worker
to derive a sense of the genuine
contribution they might be making
to the real needs of humanity marx
argued that modern work leads to
alienation and in other words
a feeling of disconnection between what
you do all day
and who you feel you really are and what
you think you'd ideally be able
to contribute to existence modern work
is insecure capitalism makes the human
being utterly expendable
just one factor among others in the
forces of production
and one that can ruthlessly be let go
the minute costs rise
or savings can be made through
technology and yet as marx knew deep
inside each of us
we don't want to be arbitrarily let go
we're terrified
of being abandoned communism isn't just
an economic theory
understood emotionally it expresses a
deep-seated longing that we always have
a place in the world's heart
that we will not be cast out workers get
paid little
while capitalists get rich this is
perhaps the most
obvious qualm that marx had with
capitalism
in particular he believed that
capitalists shrink the wages of the
labourers
as much as possible in order to skim off
a wide profit margin
he called this primitive accumulation or
springlike
whereas capitalists see profit as a
reward for ingenuity and technological
talent
marx was far more damning profit is
simply
theft and what you're stealing is the
talent and hard work of your workforce
however much one dresses up the
fundamentals marx insists
that at its crudest capitalism means
paying a worker one price for doing
something
and then selling it to somebody else at
a much higher price
profit is the fancy term for
exploitation
capitalism is very unstable marx
proposed that capitalist systems are
characterized by a series of crises
every crisis is dressed up by
capitalists as being somehow
freakish and rare and soon to be the
last one far from it argued marx
crises are endemic to capitalism and
they're caused by something rather odd
the fact that we're able to produce too
much far more than anyone needs to
consume
capitalist crises are crises of
abundance
rather than as in the past crises of
shortage
our factories and systems are so
efficient we could give
everyone in this planet a car a house
access to a decent school in a hospital
and that's what so enraged marx but also
made him so hopeful
too few of us actually need to work
because the modern economy is so
productive but rather than seeing this
need
not to work as the freedom it is we
complain about it masochistically
and describe it by a pejorative word
unemployment
we should call it freedom there's so
much
unemployment for a good and deeply
admirable reason because we're so good
at making things efficiently
we're not all needed at the coal face
but in that case we should thought marks
make leisure admirable we should
redistribute the wealth of the massive
corporations that make so much surplus
money
and give it to everyone this is in its
own way
as beautiful a dream as jesus's promise
of heaven
but a good deal more realistic sounding
capitalism is bad for capitalists
marx didn't think that capitalists were
evil for example he was acutely aware of
the sorrows and secret agonies that lay
behind
bourgeois marriage marx argued that
marriage
was actually an extension of business
and that the bourgeois family was
fraught with
tension oppression and resentment with
people staying together not for love
but for financial reasons marx believed
that the capitalist system forces
everyone to put economic interests at
the heart of their lives
so that they can no longer know deep
honest relationships
he called this psychological tendency
commodity fetishism
because it makes us value things that
have no objective value
he wanted people to be freed from
financial constraint
so that they could at last start to make
sensible
healthy choices in their relationships
the 20th century feminist answer
to the oppression of women has been to
argue that women should simply be able
to go out to work
but marx's answer was more subtle this
feminist insistence merely perpetuates
human slavery
the point isn't that women should
imitate the sufferings of their male
colleagues
it's that men and women should have the
permanent option
to enjoy leisure why don't we all think
a bit more like marx
an important aspect of marx's work is
that he proposes that there's an
insidious subtle way
in which the economic system colours the
sort of ideas that we end up having
the economy generates what marx termed
an ideology
a capitalist society is one where most
people rich and poor
believe all sorts of things that are
really just value judgments that relate
back to the economic system
for example that a person who doesn't
work is worthless that leisure beyond a
few weeks a year
is sinful that more belongings will make
us happier and that worthwhile things
and people
will invariably make money in short one
of the biggest evils of capitalism
is not that there are corrupt people at
the top this is true in any human
hierarchy
but that capitalist ideas teach all of
us to be anxious
competitive conformist and politically
complacent
marx didn't only outline what was wrong
with capitalism
we also get glimpses of what marx wanted
the ideal utopian future to be like
in his communist manifesto he describes
a world without private property or
inherited wealth
with a steeply graduated income tax
centralized control of the banking
communication and transport industries
and free public education marx also
expected that communist society
would allow people to develop lots of
different sides of their natures
in communist society it's possible for
me to do one thing today and another
tomorrow
to hunt in the morning fish in the
afternoon rear cattle in the evening
criticize after dinner just as i have a
mind without ever becoming
hunter fisherman herdsmen or critic
after marx moved to london he was
supported by his friend and intellectual
partner friedrich
engels a wealthy man whose father owned
a cotton plant in manchester
engels covered marx's debts and made
sure his works were published
capitalism paid for communism the two
men even wrote each other adoring poetry
marx was not a well-regarded or popular
intellectual in his day
respectable conventional people of
marx's day would have laughed at the
idea that his ideas could remake the
world
yet just a few decades later they did
his writings became the keystone for
some of the most important ideological
movements of the 20th century
but marx was like a brilliant doctor in
the early days of medicine
he could recognize the nature of the
disease although he had no idea how to
go about curing it
at this point in history we should all
be marxists
in the sense of agreeing with his
diagnosis of our troubles
but we need to go out and find the cures
that really will work
as marx himself declared and we deeply
agree
philosophers until now have only
interpreted the world in various ways
the point however
is to change it
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