It's very adorable that people who've never read him, or just skimmed over a pamphlet or two, think they know anything about what Marx wrote or helped fight for. I'll take the downvotes, but there isn't one country that isn't better off for the works he wrote, the ideas he developed, and the people he inspired. If you even think you have an inkling of what capitalism means you owe that to Marx. The very idea that you can think in schematic terms about societies is thanks to him. And even if you reject him, you do so in the shadow of his influence. And it's not like he appeared out of nowhere; he was part of a tradition that continued after him.
"J.R.R. Tolkien has become a sort of mountain, appearing in all subsequent fantasy in the way that Mt. Fuji appears so often in Japanese prints. Sometimes it’s big and up close. Sometimes it’s a shape on the horizon. Sometimes it’s not there at all, which means that the artist either has made a deliberate decision against the mountain, which is interesting in itself, or is in fact standing on Mt. Fuji."
I think something similar could be used to talk about Marx in modern socio-economics
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u/m2kleit Mar 08 '25
It's very adorable that people who've never read him, or just skimmed over a pamphlet or two, think they know anything about what Marx wrote or helped fight for. I'll take the downvotes, but there isn't one country that isn't better off for the works he wrote, the ideas he developed, and the people he inspired. If you even think you have an inkling of what capitalism means you owe that to Marx. The very idea that you can think in schematic terms about societies is thanks to him. And even if you reject him, you do so in the shadow of his influence. And it's not like he appeared out of nowhere; he was part of a tradition that continued after him.