The Labor theory of value was as much a creation of Adam Smith and David Ricardo as Karl Marx. No less a personage than Lincoln extolled it in glowing terms; economics wasn't that sophisticated back then.
Blaming Marx directly for the evils of totalitarianism is absurd. I am a capitalist but I recognize that this system has also been a vehicle for exploitation and repression, just like communism and mercantilism. Marx didn't kill anyone or urge the death of anyone, he just viewed the system of bourgeois (middle class) capitalism as unsustainable, just as hereditary feudalism had proved unsustainable before that. His ideas about what would and should replace it are wrong, but foolishness is not the same as mendacity.
The man's philosophies have led to more misery than just about anyone else in history.
A bold statement...and an unsupportable one. Shall we examine the influence of platonic thought on subsequent authority? Or the lives lost in pursuit of monotheistic ideals? How many have died under the banner of droit de seigneur? Most of us enjoy the modern luxury of evaluating Marx's errors from a position of considerable economic and political freedom, far removed from what was available to the proletariat during Marx's day. Back then, most people weren't allowed to vote; even the various reform acts brought very slow progress and women weren't considered worthy of having political opinions until long after Marx had died.
Blaming Marx directly for the evils of totalitarianism is absurd. I am a capitalist but I recognize that this system has also been a vehicle for exploitation and repression, just like communism and mercantilism. Marx didn't kill anyone or urge the death of anyone, he just viewed the system of bourgeois (middle class) capitalism as unsustainable, just as hereditary feudalism had proved unsustainable before that. His ideas about what would and should replace it are wrong, but foolishness is not the same as mendacity.
The man's philosophies have led to more misery than just about anyone else in history.
A bold statement...and an unsupportable one. Shall we examine the influence of platonic thought on subsequent authority? Or the lives lost in pursuit of monotheistic ideals? How many have died under the banner of droit de seigneur? Most of us enjoy the modern luxury of evaluating Marx's errors from a position of considerable economic and political freedom, far removed from what was available to the proletariat during Marx's day. Back then, most people weren't allowed to vote; even the various reform acts brought very slow progress and women weren't considered worthy of having political opinions until long after Marx had died.