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Karl Marx Explained the 19th Century. Wolfgang Streeck Is Explaining the 21st.(nytimes.com)
3 points by mitchbob 13 hours ago | 4 comments
mitchbob 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

https://archive.ph/2024.11.28-071907/https://www.nytimes.com...

brodouevencode 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

How anyone could consider Marx to have any positive influence on humanity is beyond me.

jfengel 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's not about influence on humanity. It's about scholarship.

Marx was a significant and influential economist. Some of his predictions have panned out; others haven't. A lot of his insights are extremely important, and are accepted by even the most hardcore capitalists.

He wasn't particularly thrilled about his "influence". His work wasn't so much "misinterpreted" as just plain co-opted to mean something totally different. He supposedly said, “If anything is certain about me, It is that I am not a Marxist.” The quote may not be authentic, but it accurately reflects that fact that the vast majority of "Marxists" don't appear to have read his work.

And that also holds true for the vast majority of critics. Most of the things commonly attributed to being "Marxist" are just plain false.

ConspiracyFact 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

His ideology may have been ill-conceived but he was an incisive historian.