I first learned about Karl Marx back when I took a course in
Economics. The professor sort of glossed
the theory of Marxism, because Marxism is as much about Politics and Sociology
as it is about Economics. I was,
therefore, left with the sense that Karl Marx was a generally smart person who
applied his knowledge to try to create a better strategy for money and
employment. After all, with so many
governments declaring themselves ‘Marxist’ to one degree or another, there had
to be something rational about his theories, I supposed.
But having finally read ‘Das Kapital’, I realize now that Karl
Marx was not only unable to understand basic economic facts, he was remarkably
stubborn in ignoring glaring blunders in his own theories. I read that he took thirty years to write the
first volume of ‘Das Kapital’ (Engels, a singularly inept theorist in his own name,
forced the second and third volumes through the publishing process and onto an
unsuspecting public), but I suspect what really happened was it took Marx three
decades to find a publisher doltish enough to put his rant into print. I mean, just how dull does a student or
scholar have to be to actually take Marx seriously? A man whose formulae never once seriously addressed
the risk of investors and business owners?
A man who actually tried to promote the idea that a product’s value
depended on how hard someone had to work to make it? That innovation, globalization, process
improvement and logistics were somehow undesirable? Karl Marx got more than half of basic
economics wrong, and crippled the better part of three continents with his
notions for half a century.
The professional success of Rosanne Barr in the late
twentieth century proves that people sometimes back incredibly poor choices,
but one might wonder just how Marx reached the conclusions he did. Marx was born into a wealthy family in Germany,
and as soon as he got out of school (with very poor grades at first) Karl began
to punish his parents every chance he got.
Kicked out of Germany, then France, Karl finally settled down in London,
where his personal application of economics left his family destitute and
nearly starving. Like
most narcissists, Marx believed that the only solution to economic disparity and
poverty was the scientific application of revolution and Socialism,
specifically using his model for class warfare and stealing wealth from the
people who made it. By 1850, Marx had
settled into finding ways to sell his rants as some kind of science, for which purpose
‘Das Kapital’ was written.
Marx made his money through his writing and in organizing
socialist groups in Europe and the U.S.
That is to say, Karl had learned what sold in the popular newsstands and
took care of his family’s finances in a manner far different from his proposed
solutions in his essays, speeches and books.
By the time he died in 1883, Karx had mastered the art of political
hypocrisy, selling with full voice a political theory he had personally
abandoned long before.
