What is valid in Marxism? : Marginal Revolution

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/08/what_is_valid_i.html

Brad DeLong offers a scathing and accurate critique of Marxism. He then asks for five valid points in Marxist doctrine. Who better to have a go at this than I?

I am translating all arguments into a modern context and modern analytical terms. Marx as we know him did not write as such. And yes, I do know that you can find many of these ideas in Smith and others.

1. Capitalist systems, especially before reaching contemporary times, can produce less autonomy than small scale production. Standards of living do rise from industrialization. But I look at many of my rural Mexican friends. They could earn somewhat higher wages in factories, but they prefer to paint ceramics at home. It is more fun and they control their time to a large degree. At some point industrialization can undercut the cultures and networks of suppliers that makes such a choice possible. Marx directs our attention to a certain indivisibility of systems.

2. Marxism promotes an alternative idea of freedom, namely freedom from the market. Anyone who has chosen life as a tenured university professor should not claim that such an idea is complete nonsense. Smith thought in terms of marginal tradeoffs. Marx, above all, focused on inframarginal and systematic effects.

3. The benefits of industrialization take a long time to kick in. Reforming postcommunist economies took fifteen years or more. Poland did most things right and people there are still unhappy. So how long should it take to reform feudalism or other preindustrial structures? Forty years? I take seriously the idea that the industrial revolution did not make people better off right away, so did Marx.

4. Being happy at work is one of the most important things in life. Marx saw the importance of this more clearly than did many of the classical economists. And he saw the importance of inframarginal systemic factors.

5. A growing division of labor can make some people unhappier at their jobs.

To sum up, we all know that capitalism brings a "creative destruction," to use the phrase of Schumpeter. This is all for the better, but Marx saw how strong both the positive and negative sides of this process would be. And he knew that the relevant problems went deeper than just looking at whether people make rational tradeoffs at the margin. That being said, he overestimated the negative side of the market and underestimated how well capitalism could solve its problems concerning the distribution of income.

Of course marxism, as a political program, remains dangerous nonsense. Marx's blind spots were enormous, and I still cannot understand how generations of the intelligentsia were taken in by the whole thing.

Addendum: The link to Brad´s post has been corrected.

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Z ap/ab 3mo ago #7030593 Edited 3mo ago

Literally nothing is fricking valid in marxism. :#platymicdrop:

1. History itself is fricking evidence that industrialisation of a fricking country correlates with increased life expectancy, less poverty, and better standards of living. Their Mexican artisan example is a fricking non-sequitur as even in heavily industrialised societies people retain the fricking freedom to weigh up for themselves what they value most between high wages and high enjoyment, and many people find ways to maximise both. The fricking fact remains that industrialisation creates new industries and new types of jobs, vastly increasing the fricking choices or work available for people to make ends meet in the fricking best and most enjoyable way that they choose.

2. False dichotomy. Markets are not fricking oppressive forces that people require "freedom from". They are fricking mechanisms for voluntary exchange or cooperation. Their own example of tenured professors is fricking actually an example of how free markets reward specialisation and expertise. Historically, free market economies vastly outperform planned economies in both innovation and economic growth and certainly in individual liberties.

3. Typical r-slur talking about. "Well this policy won't help me literally tomorrow, therefore it's worthless". To begin with, they are fricking wrong about industrialisation taking too long to provide benefits. A fricking number of countries like South Korea (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_on_the_Han_River) and Taiwan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_Miracle) successfully industrialised for insanely exponential growth in their economies and quality of life in relatively short time frames. Even without those examples it's not difficult to understand that one should weigh up the fricking long term benefits of economic policy before deciding on their value. Lastly, of course reforming postcommunist economies took a fricking long time (and btw 15 years is not fricking that long) to grow substantially. The fricking clue is fricking in the fricking description they gave of those countries (hint: they're clawing their way back out of the fricking hole that central planning dug them in to, and this takes time).

22 Context

johannesalthusius they/them '); DROP TABLE Users;-- Z 3mo ago #7030868 Edited 3mo ago spent 180 currency on pings

The author, Tyler Cowen, is a libertarian economist. He is very capitalist and generally agrees with you. He's making much subtler arguments.

1. The Mexican potter prefers painting ceramics at home for less money over working in the factory for more, because the former gives her more autonomy. Eventually, industrialization will flood the market with cheap ceramics and destroy her way of life. She will be forced to work in a factory, thus losing autonomy. It is not until Mexico becomes a post-industrial society that she might have the chance to paint ceramics again.

2. Markets are not the only form of voluntary association. The college tenure track is a classic example of a non-market association. A more relevant one is dating. Dating apps transformed dating from a communal, social process into an e-commerce transaction. If you think that Tinder ruined dating, you believe that markets have corrupted dating. !incels

3. South Korea and Taiwan are the luckiest of development paths. Poland had a solid B+ development path, yet it is still pretty shitty. Just because capitalism will eventually make you rich, doesn't mean the journey won't suck. Also, this was written in 2004, when Poland's economic woes were way worse.

4. "Happiness at work" is qualitative, subjective, and impossible to measure, so economists like to point to more concrete measures like income, life expectancy, etc. But many people in nice, rich countries are still miserable at work. Cowen's point is that Marx, unlike modern economists, did not underrate subjective quality-of-life metrics.

5. Let's say you're a cobbler and your society industrializes. Technically, the market has granted you more choice: you can either be a cobbler, or you can glue soles onto Sketchers in a factory. In reality, however, you never wanted the latter and the flood of cheap shoes has made it much harder to choose the former.