I’m in Pieria again, with a post that tries to outline Marxist theories and defend them from some of the weaker criticisms around:
For many, Marxist theories should be laid to rest. His labor theory of value is often referred to as “discredited”, superseded by the subjective theory of value, while historical materialism and its lofty ideals about changing human nature are held to be equally fallacious. His purported views on colonialism (and their Leninist children), while not entirely wrong, are held to be incomplete as they fail to include non-capitalist instances of these phenomena. Finally, his historical ideas about the ‘inevitable’ overthrow of class war and victory of socialism are seen as naive and deterministic, and, to a degree, ethnocentric.
However, as I will show, such crude caricatures have been around for over a century, and were often repudiated by Marx (and his collaborator, Friedrich Engels) themselves.
I talk about the Labour Theory of Value (not price!), which I’ve defended before, as well as the Marxist view of colonialism and imperialism; finally, I refute the absurd idea that Marx supported a strong form of historical materialism.
As a brief conjecture, I think one of the main problems people have with accepting Marxism – aside from the difficult political implications – is that it is such a comprehensive ‘theory of everything’. While, as I argue, Marxism gives birth to many falsifiable hypotheses, it also acts as a lens through which to view the world. Hence, embracing it fully is a big step for a most people, because they (a) lose the ‘individuality’ of their views and (b) have to master an entirely different method of communication. (To this end, I would advise Marxists to refrain from using terminology quite as much as they do – it alienates (!) people).
Anyway, ‘read the whole thing’, as they say.
