Karl Marx

Notes

Karl Marx (1818–1883), German philosopher and economist, author of Capital and co-author of The Communist Manifesto. A penetrating critic of capitalism and a poor guide to what should replace it. His labour theory of value was superseded by the marginalists within a generation; his critique of alienation and concentration has worn better.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx

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Communism

The critique retains some value. Karl Marx was right that capitalism concentrates wealth, that it is prone to crisis, and that it shapes culture and politics in its own interests. He was wrong about the remedy, and his economic foundations…

The Labour Theory of Value

The theory was held in various forms by John Locke, Adam Smith, and David Ricardo before Karl Marx adopted and significantly developed it. Marx made it the foundation of his critique of capitalism: if labour is the source of all value, the…

Quotes I like

"A communist has read Marx and Lenin and an anti-communist understands Marx and Lenin" - Ronald Reagan

Adam Smith

Adam Smith (1723–1790), Scottish moral philosopher and the founder of modern economics. The Wealth of Nations (1776) described how self-interested exchange, coordinated by prices, produces outcomes no one intended; The Theory of Moral Sent…

David Ricardo

David Ricardo (1772–1823), English economist and stockbroker. On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817) gave the labour theory of value its most rigorous classical form, which Karl Marx then took over, and set out the theo…

Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk

Karl Marx

G.W.F. Hegel

He appears here because Karl Marx took Hegel's dialectic, discarded the Spirit, and made the contradictions material and economic; Communism is Hegel turned, as Marx put it, the right way up. He also stands as the clearest example of the k…