[Marx's analysis]...is not relevant anymore because it is just not accurate enough in the modern globalised world we have. .
One thing I meant to comment on previously was the irony that in these present times, more and more pro capitalist figures are actually pointing (back) to Marx as a way of beginning to understanding the mess we're in
Someone who should know a thing or two about this 'modern globalised world we have' is George Magnus who is the Chief Economist at UBS - one of the world's largest universal banks
In a
research document on the current crisis which was published last month - he starts it off with a quote from Marx and comments
Chief Economist at UBS said:
Now you don’t have to be a member of the Socialist International to recognise that Marx’s words above have contemporary relevance
This isn't a one off either - the same George Magnus - Chief Economist at UBS recently wrote a letter to the Financial Times titled
Capitalism is Having a Very Marxist Crisis - below are a few quotes from that letter:-
As a member of the Marx-is-relevant school
the reason for Marx’s relevance today is precisely because we are in a once-in-a-generation crisis of capitalism
Marx analysed and explained insightfully how and why capitalism would succumb to recurrent crises, and especially big ones after a credit bust. He also placed this, as his peer predecessors had, in the context of political economy, and what we’d now call feedback loops.
How regrettable then that economists and bankers substituted the delusion of the “new economy” for the rigours of political economy, and still maintain that if only government and regulation would get out the way, there would be a spontaneous revival in private spending and lending. They need to reboot intellectually, as Sir Samuel suggests, and think about how to address a very Marxist crisis of capitalism
Or how about this piece he wrote for Bloomberg -
Give Karl Marx a Chance to Save the World Economy
Policy makers struggling to understand the barrage of financial panics, protests and other ills afflicting the world would do well to study the works of a long-dead economist: Karl Marx. The sooner they recognize we’re facing a once-in-a-lifetime crisis of capitalism, the better equipped they will be to manage a way out of it.
Consider, for example, Marx’s prediction of how the inherent conflict between capital and labor would manifest itself. As he wrote in “Das Kapital,” companies’ pursuit of profits and productivity would naturally lead them to need fewer and fewer workers, creating an “industrial reserve army” of the poor and unemployed: “Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery.”
The process he describes is visible throughout the developed world, particularly in the U.S. Companies’ efforts to cut costs and avoid hiring have boosted U.S. corporate profits as a share of total economic output to the highest level in more than six decades, while the unemployment rate stands at 9.1 percent and real wages are stagnant.
So here's an example of someone who clearly wouldn't care much for Marx's politics or the type of world he'd like to see, however, unlike yourself, he's astute enough to realise the value of Marx's work in attempting to understand this 'modern globalised world we have'
And it's not just him - how about Nouriel Roubini who was one of the few mainstream economists to actually predict the financial crisis before it hit in 2007 - he clearly owes a debt to Marx for his ability to have a better handle on what's going on around us in the here & now than most economists do. In an
interview with the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago he says:-
"Karl Marx had it right," Roubini said in an interview with wsj.com. "At some point capitalism can self-destroy itself. That's because you can not keep on shifting income from labor to capital without not having an excess capacity and a lack of aggregate demand. We thought that markets work. They are not working. What's individually rational ... is a self-destructive process."
NYU Economics Professor Nouriel "Dr. Doom" Roubini said unless there's another round of massive fiscal stimulus or a universal debt restructuring, capitalism will continue to experience a crisis due to a systemic flaw first identified by economist Karl Marx more than a century ago.
Now both these two gentlemen are clearly not Marxists but are bright enough to acknowledge the insights that Marx's decades of research & analysis brings us
As to why i'm typing all this out fuck knows as you're as daft as a stick
