What if Marx was wrong? Need help.

[Guardia Rossa]

What if Karl Marx was wrong, and actually the rate of profit ain't declining, or the classes won't fight eachother, or something that makes marxism impossible.

I need an "Even if" argumentation line. I really need one.

[Guardia Rossa]

By that I mean a "Even if" argumentation, for if the fall of capitalism as said by Marx wouldn't work.

[Creative Destruction]

Well, just on the two points you brought up: the classes are fighting. At it's base, any struggle between workers and the bourgeoisie for concessions is a class struggle. Whether it's a revolutionary class struggle is another thing.

As for the rate of profit: it is declining. Many Marxists have written on this topic. One who has done the most substantial work lately is Andrew Kliman. You can read his book The Failure of Capitalist Production (http://digamo.free.fr/kliman01.pdf) and he shows, with empirical evidence, that the rate of profit is declining.

[Guardia Rossa]

Yes, I know and I do agree. But I need a "even if classes weren't fighting and rate of profit ain't falling, and that giant corporations ain't controlling our lifes" line of argument

[Creative Destruction]

Why? You might as well ask for a "what if capitalists really aren't exploiting the workers" line of argument, as well. Were none of this true, capitalism would be just fine. There'd be no reason to critique it and confront it. Your line of argument here, were nothing that Marx said was true, was to uphold those who feel like capitalism is the greatest thing, or you'd be anarchist critiquing it from the point of view that any and all hierarchy is bad, or you'd be a social democrat who thinks it's a generally good system that we just have to fix here and there.

[Redistribute the Rep]

Is this for a school assignment? If so, you could maybe twist the wording a bit to get want you're looking for.

Consider Gramsci's theory of cultural hegemony:


In Marxist philosophy, the term cultural hegemony describes the domination of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class, who manipulate the culture of that society — the beliefs, explanations, perceptions, values, and mores — so that their ruling-class worldview becomes the worldview that is imposed and accepted as the cultural norm; as the universally valid dominant ideology that justifies the social, political, and economic status quo as natural, inevitable, perpetual and beneficial for everyone, rather than as artificial social constructs that benefit only the ruling class.


In the Marxist tradition, the Italian writer Antonio Gramsci elaborated the role of ideology in creating a cultural hegemony, which becomes a means of bolstering the power of capitalism and of the nation-state. Drawing on Niccolò Machiavelli in The Prince, and trying to understand why there had been no Communist revolution in Western Europe, while it was claimed there had been one in Russia, Gramsci conceptualised this hegemony as a centaur, consisting of two halves. The back end, the beast, represented the more classic, material image of power, power through coercion, through brute force, be it physical or economic. But the capitalist hegemony, he argued, depended even more strongly on the front end, the human face, which projected power through 'consent'. In Russia, this power was lacking, allowing for a revolution. However, in Western Europe, specifically in Italy, capitalism had succeeded in exercising consensual power, convincing the working classes that their interests were the same as those of capitalists. In this way revolution had been avoided.

You could use this to say something like "even if capitalism is widely accepted, social classes still have competing interests and revolution is possible" or something.

[ñángara]

What if Karl Marx was wrong...

I need an "Even if" argumentation line. I really need one.
Piero Sraffa proved the correctness of the Ricardian theory of value (goods worth by the labour contained in them) in the 1960s with current higher mathematics.

It is a fact: Profit comes from the capitalist appropriation of the surplus value produced by workers.

[Redistribute the Rep]

Marx wasn't necessarily wrong in a profound way, but there's certainly room for the twentieth century developments in Marxist theory, otherwise we'd have no need for intellectuals like Gramsci. Today's capitalism isn't exactly what it was in Marx's time, after all. So maybe try to phrase you 'even if' argument in a such way that it addresses how today's proletariat can benefit from marxism, despite them facing some different situations than what 19th century Marxism focused on.

[cyu]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy affects more in propaganda than people give it credit for.

Many people will try to prove "Marx was wrong about X" (or "Some other leftist was wrong about X") therefore it's all wrong. That is an example of association fallacy.

On the other hand, even if Marx was right about A, B, C, and D, that doesn't make him or anybody else infallible. Personally I treat all leftist thinkers like different sets of DNA - try to learn from and draw whatever you think is coolest from each.

[Creative Destruction]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy affects more in propaganda than people give it credit for.

Many people will try to prove "Marx was wrong about X" (or "Some other leftist was wrong about X") therefore it's all wrong. That is an example of association fallacy.

On the other hand, even if Marx was right about A, B, C, and D, that doesn't make him or anybody else infallible. Personally I treat all leftist thinkers like different sets of DNA - try to learn from and draw whatever you think is coolest from each.

It's different when you're arguing against parts of Marx's ideas that form critical parts of the framework he set out -- like saying his crisis theory is wrong or inconsistent.

Marxist's framework isn't a "pick and choose" framework, where you can just choose the "coolest" things from it and leave everything else aside. It's a total framework. If your argument is that there is something wrong in it, then you need to present an argument for why it is wrong and see if it can be resolved. It'd be like saying you want to pick and choose some cool things from a house, but, hey, I want to get rid of this support beam because it makes the room look askew. You've got to look at what the support beam is actually supporting and decide if it actually needs to be there, and, if not, you need to find a way to get rid of it while ensuring the house doesn't completely collapse.

[cyu]

I guess taking things from an anarchist viewpoint, I don't feel the need to take everything from Marx - otherwise I'd just be a Marxist - but yes, agreed, if something needs a support beam and you don't like it, then you'll either have to keep the beam, or "evolve" a better support beam.

[MarxSchmarx]

Let's take the ops question at face value. Marx was after all wrong about lots of things.

If capitalism is predicated on the production of value - namely, dealing with scarcity, then the material well being of anybody is determined by how well they provide for this scarcity.

But the ability to supply a demand is to some degree no less arbitrary than the ability to be born into the aristocracy. Suppose curly black hair was in incredible demand as wigs. People such as marx born with curly black hair maybe considerably better off materially than those born with straight blonde hair. Now we can ask how is this state of affairs NY different than rewarding the children of aristocrats with hereditary privilege.

But the capitalist mode of production and a market economy lend the,selves to creating these sorts of fads. Blonde people will pay handsomely for curly black hair or even trade futures in it or whatever . In this sense the very mode of capitalist production is[ profoundly dehumanizing. Notice this same argument applies to those who are "gifted" computer programmers, bankers, athletes, whatever.

Thus the liberal capitalist cannot lay any moral high ground relative to the feudalistic. Even i f (later) Marx was wrong about his analysis of capitalism and the nature of exploitation (obviously I think he is spot on btw) this fundamental contradiction is sufficient to expose the moral vacuity of a defense of capitalism.