Not really, because he makes a fundamental mistake. He thinks those that hold capital use violence and oppression against the masses.
But he's got the cause and effect wrong - the people who use violence and oppression wind up seizing capital.
What's the difference? Well, look at history. It's not the merchants and traders and inventors and builders that oppress people - it's the people with swords and guns. Marx's prescription to that is that the oppressed people grab swords and guns and raise some hell, and take over, and then... whoops.
The accumulation of resources (private property) and voluntary exchange (capitalism) aren't problems. Violence, coercion, oppression is the problem. Unfortunately, Marx gets the cause and effect backwards. He sees violent people holding capital, and blames the capital instead of the violence. He then says the people without capital should use violence to seize it... with predictably bad results.
Marx didn't understand capitalism - he never did productive work in his life. The cause of oppression stems from violence and coercion, not accumulation of resources and voluntary exchange.
> Not really, because he makes a fundamental mistake. He thinks those that hold capital use violence and oppression against the masses.
You will disagree, I would imagine, but Marx would argue that one of the most important features of capitalism is that it appears to be an abstract relationship of buying and selling sans violence, even as it is very much a system of oppression of one class over another. He doesn't forget that the swords are put away (though they come out when necessary to sustain the market relationships), he just disagrees with you that forcing a whole lot of people to trade their labor on the market (at a low-ish price, since they don't control the market environment) is any less oppressive than telling a peasant explicitly to till the soil or get killed.
No offense, but he understood capitalism a lot better than you -- he just didn't believe capitalists when they said "it's not the merchants and traders ... that oppress people"
Not really, because he makes a fundamental mistake. He thinks those that hold capital use violence and oppression against the masses.
But he's got the cause and effect wrong - the people who use violence and oppression wind up seizing capital.
What's the difference? Well, look at history. It's not the merchants and traders and inventors and builders that oppress people - it's the people with swords and guns. Marx's prescription to that is that the oppressed people grab swords and guns and raise some hell, and take over, and then... whoops.
The accumulation of resources (private property) and voluntary exchange (capitalism) aren't problems. Violence, coercion, oppression is the problem. Unfortunately, Marx gets the cause and effect backwards. He sees violent people holding capital, and blames the capital instead of the violence. He then says the people without capital should use violence to seize it... with predictably bad results.
Marx didn't understand capitalism - he never did productive work in his life. The cause of oppression stems from violence and coercion, not accumulation of resources and voluntary exchange.