Marxist Theory today

[Ligeia]

I`ve got a question:
In politics in school the teacher gave us an interview with an economist called "Rogoff", anyway,it's about the effects of economic globalisation and the economist states that Marx' theory was totally wrong.

I know that's not true,I think, he wa referring to the historical materialism (the fall of capitalism) but nevertheless Marx had a lot of theories/predictions which came true today.....but I cannot remember or list them and I need those theories which came true for school debate about Marx.

So can anyone help me and tell me which of his predictions came true and which not? :mellow:

[Hit The North]

Firstly, it would be a mistake to get drawn into the argument on the basis of 'prediction', as if Marx was a fortune-teller.

Nevertheless, you could argue very convincingly that because Marx grasped the nature of capitalism and understood the forces and relations which give it movement, that he was able to trace out potential directions for its future development.

A classic example can be found in the first part of 'The Communist Manifesto' where Marx and Engels outline a primitive description of globalisation - and this would be good stuff to quote in class as it does anticipate some of the key processes we see today - the continued onslaught against traditional cultures and beliefs as capitalism commodifies and rationalises the world around it, for instance. It's Marx's view of capitalism as a totalising system which sets it apart from bourgeosie economic or sociological theories.

The question then is what insight does Marxism give us in terms of being able to understand the character of globalization? What are the main features: smooth, even development based on concensus or a discontinuous uneven development charac terised by conflict? From there you could cite Lenin on Imperialism and up-to-date Marxists such as David Harvey (LINK (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Harvey_(geographer))) or Ernst Mandel (LINK (http://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/index.htm)).

The thing to emphasise is that marxism doesn't give us a menu of predictions - it's not, after all, a branch of astrology; but it gives us tools of analysis in order to understand the present and its possible or probable future trajectory.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Ligeia, remember not all science is predictive.

Darwinism cannot predict the future course of evolution (except in the broadest and most general of senses), and the forecasts of mainstream economists are not known for their reliability.

Explanatory power is just as good a guide, and here Marxism leaves every other theory standing.

But, in the continuing crises of over-propduction, the centralisation of capital in larger and larger units, the commidification of everything (they even tried to commidify rain water in Bolivia!) -- look at how the capitalists are patenting genes, and some organisms -- with market relations reaching into every sphere of life, the falling rate of profit, Marx was spot on.

[Ligeia]

Well,"prediction" indeed is not the right word to use here, better would be he was not wrong with all he wrote. :mellow:

First of all,thank you for those fast answers, I'll look that up(I even already read a book from Ernest Mandel which explained economy in short, but I forgot half of it :P )
:)

When I wrote "predictions" I thought about things like objectified work (when production and worth are different because of the means of production) or production for production (when capitalist are only accumulating capital and consumer goods as display and neccesity)...
many things he wrote down in "das Kapital",I think, are such things which were understood by Marx and have not changed or are now more present than before....

But I didn't find the word to describe these thoughts.

But You understood me anyway, :D

[Lord Koba]

Globalism is completely consistent with Marxist philosophy since capitalism is moving to integrate society, or as Lenin(???) put it - welding together the town proletariat. Where most Marxist groups stumble today is their nationalistic trend of rooting for the underdog in so-called 'slave wars' *cough*Iran*cough* where it is currently trendy for Marxists to support one nationalistic regime in a struggle over a stronger nationalistic regime. Now, I'm no Lenin - but this certainly does sound like the rhetoric that Kautsky was spouting out about the time of 1914 where he prompted for the german workers to support their nation in a struggle against a greater more imperialistic power.

[BreadBros]

"The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality.

The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must consitute itself the nation, it is so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.

National differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.

The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United action, of the leading civilised countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat."

-Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto

Please point this out to your teacher and show how this supposed "economist" is either an extremely poor reader or is in actuality attempting to advance his agenda by misrepresenting truths. Karl Marx not only accurately foresaw the developments of global economic integration and the development of capitalism, they were integral to his theories.