What where marx's predictions for the future?
I've heard that he predicted that the middle class would shrink and the poor would grow. That didn't happen.
But i've also heard that by middle class he meant people who work in finance and don't actually produce anything.
And don't come at me with "go read all of his books and the communist manifesto and these 20 books deciphering marx"
Taiwanese gouache gravure boards are for conversations, let's have one.
What where marx's predictions for the future?
Carter Edwards
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Connor Bennett
Your computer will pump novichok into your room in the next 30 days. That is Dugin Marx only prediction, price 5 kopecks.
Aaron Martin
This is a ridiculous simplification of what he predicted, but it actually did happen, so IDK what drugs you're on.
You could just read Capital you know. If you're not a fucking brainlet.
Josiah Cook
When Marx uses the term middle class, he is usually talking about the bourgeoisie when they occupied a "middle class" between the aristocracy and the proletariat. Eventually the bourgeoisie overtook the aristocracy and thus became the new ruling class, though in some countries this situation still continued in a somewhat haphazard manner.
Elijah Martinez
Not Marx, but Engels predicted WWI with impressive accuracy
Hudson Perez
Fuck you, can't you fucking read the goddamn OP post?
Poverty has only gone down.
Landon Evans
Worldwide poverty has largely actually remained the same for decades.
The primary way they hide this fact is by counting people who live successfully on subsistence farming as being in the lowest levels of poverty, and then once their land gets taken over and they're forced to wage slavery and get paid literally less than the value of what they were making before, at just over the "extreme poverty" line, the "poverty" vanishes!
Colton Hughes
Wrong, Marx's definition of middle class is the petite bourgeoisie, or small capitalists. Broadly defined it means property owners who still have to work, such as artisans (shoemakers, bakers, etc) and peasants / family farmers. Under the pressures of the accumulation of capital, this "middle class" would die out as their small firms are run out of business by large ones. Having lost their property, the petite bourgeoisie would become working class, or proletarian, as they no longer own any means of production but their ability to work. As time goes on, society is divided between a larger and larger working class and a smaller and smaller circle of ultra-rich capitalists.
This prediction has been confirmed by history. What is left of "small business" is a meme propped up by endless subsidies, because they are necessary to keep the "bootstrap dream" alive.
Connor Kelly
Christopher Collins
that the boom-bust cycle of capitalism would continue, and that the capitalists would never be able to
eliminate it (for reasons Marx explained in depth);
that peasant-type (semi-feudal) agriculture would slowly give way to capitalist agriculture;
that capitalism would more and more become an international system;
that the class struggle would continue and grow;
that the Union would prevail in the U.S. Civil War (because of the much more advanced capitalism of
the Northern states);
that the workers would not be able to hold on to power in the Paris Commune (the very first
working class revolution, in 1871);
that the working class could only hold onto power, after seizing it, by establishing its own proletarian
dictatorship over the defeated bourgeoisie (a lesson Marx summed up after the Paris Commune and
proven correct by subsequent history); and, late in his life,
that the first successful proletarian revolution might well take place in Russia.
massline.org
Blake Watson
Matthew Rogers
I was referring to when Marx actually refers to the bourgeoisie as "the middle class", as in:
You may want to read Marx again as well. The petit-bourgeoisie are referred to as being part of the lower-middle class, while the bourgeoisie are the upper middle class. Eventually the lower middle class falls away, leaving only the upper middle class. This is a bit confusing when put in modern context, but for Marx's time this is meant show the bourgeoisie's position as of then and it's rise to power as the proper ruling class as it overtakes the remaining remanents of the aristocracy and differentiates itself from both the petit. The bourgeoisie now is the proper ruling class so you are correct in that regard, with the petit acting as a "middle".
Adrian Davis
Why do people who haven't read him insist that Marx plotted an exact course of history (he didn't) and thus conclude he was wrong and "sOciAliSm BTFO"? Marx wrote very little about what socialism would look like and how it would come about. He identified some general trends like the falling rate of profit (which is accurate) and Marxism has also developed after Marx to analyze changes in capitalism. Or do you think conservatism, liberalism, social democracy etc. are also completely debunked because they aren't static over the years?
KNOWING that a mode of production is eventually replaced by another and looking at how stable capitalism is we can simply conclude that capitalism will eventually make place for socialism. Unless you believe capitalism is the end of history, a strain of thought which has been debunked by reality over and over again.
Jayden Martin
There is a tendency for this to happen over time but it's not a linear process. The development of new technology, new industries, and new productive forces give opportunity for groups to advance economically at the expense of big firms. In static conditions the normal functioning of capitalism does lead to growing inequality between haves and have-nots. Even in the U.S. this growth of inequality has been going on for decades. For most of U.S. history, for example, new business creation and employment depended on start-ups and small business. This trend was actually reversed in the past 20 years and the number of new small businesses is shrinking.
You're right that Marx placed too much emphasis on this in his earlier writings. I've found conflicting evidence on this, but there was a period during the industrial revolution in England when real wages seemed to stagnate and the condition of working people actually became worse during what should have been an economic boom. Marx believed that these things would soon lead to a revolution, but over time he (seems to have) realized this was a miscalculation based on what was happening in the 1840s.
Middle class used to mean property owners, bourgeoisie, capitalists, etc. The nobility and landed gentry were above them. When Marx refers to small business owners or the self-employed he uses the word "petit-bourgeoisie".
Isaac Powell
Marx made several predictions. I'll lay it out here. Marx makes it very clear that he believed the gap between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat will grow larger and larger. In other words, the proletariat would get poorer, but not in absolute, but relative terms. To put it even more simply, he believed inequality would grow. This is obviously something that is true, we see it more clearly now then ever before.
Another one of his predictions was that more and more people would become proletarians, to the point in which the main two class would be bourgeois (capitalist) and proletarian (worker). We have seen this happen. Feudal lords and peasants have now completely disappeared through the course of capitalist development.
The third prediction is capitalist accumulation. Driven to greater and greater profits, capital tends to grow and accumulate. This leads to the concentration of greater and greater amounts of capital into fewer and fewer hands. This is again, something which can easily be observed in the present day.
Marx believed that capital, in its thirst for greater profits, would "settle and nest everywhere", creating a world market. This has come true.
There are then two other predictions which are closely linked. The first of these is an increase in constant capital over variable capital. To put this in simple terms, human labor would be replaced more and more with machines. This has obviously been happening.
The other prediction which is connected to this on is the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. As more money is invested into constant capital over variable capital, the rate of profit falls further. This is because, even though adopting new technology improves the profits of some firms in the short term, once this technology is adopted by all firms, it will cause the socially necessary labor time required to produce commodities to fall. This causes profit rates to fall. Now, there are ways to counteract this, but the tendency will eventually overwhelm these "countertendencies". This prediction is also true.
Finally, Marx believed that economic crisis was something that was inherent to capitalism, and it is not something that can be "solved" as neoclassical and Keynesian economists like to believe.
Noah Evans
Jeremiah Ward
If only. if only.
Ian Phillips
Define "middle class", because the vast majority of those who consider themselves middle class (the ones all those news articles talk about being 1 paycheck or illness away from total financial ruin) aren't. Now days "middle class" doesn't refer to land owning but not rich, but is anyone who isn't homeless and can afford a luxury or two.
news.northwesternmutual.com
Considering Europe has a 1000 year history of going to war every few decades I don't think it's quite that impressive.
David Perez
Apart from the fact that global poverty has NOT gone down, the main point is that wealth inequality has only widened since Marx' time. Marx predicted this correctly in "Wage Labor and Capital": the proles may become somewhat richer/less poor, but the bourgeoisie becomes richer at a much faster rate and exploitation keeps increasing.
Christopher Perez
I think I saw something related to this saying that if you looked at the number of people making less than $2 instead of the ridiculously low $1.25 then the amount of poverty in the world has actually gone up drastically.
Michael Ward
I think the funniest bit is the tax evasion ad just beneath it. Gee I wonder why society failed.
Connor Walker
Marx wasn't a fortune teller, so he did not predict the future, he simply analyzed capitalism. Because he discovered the falling rate of profit he predicted that capitalism will hit a wall at one point. But at that point the whole world was ripe for capitalism being exported. And if we establish a Mars colony before capitalism dies, it will live longer again.
Jack Williams
If that vision of capitalism were correct I would have zero problems with it. Makes me fucking depressed to be honest.
Lucas Morales
Marx didn't predict Keynesianism. The state can forestall the inevitable decline of capitalism for a bit through massive stimulation of the economy. It doesn't keep working forever though, and eventually it all collapses back to the conditions Marx described. That's what we're seeing right now.
Nathaniel Watson
Marx thought that industrial capital would eventually subsume finance capital to do its bidding, but instead it has grown back to the old debt menace responsible for countless societal collapses throughout history. Finance capital needs to be brought to heel before the class war can be waged again in earnest.
Luke Butler
Not in Yurop lol
Also if there are still people who believe in any form of sucdem politics, I could introduce you to kulaks on CAP funds, and there you'll see what real, black reaction is.
Ian Brown
Don't talk about things you know nothing about. Keynesianism died in the 80s. And Marx was perfectly open about the ability for states to attempt market interventions, and of the various counter-tendencies of ultimate crisis.
Jeremiah Miller
He discusses the Birmingham and Manchester schools too and people should really read Das Kapital.
In bourgie Europe, at least between 1945-1980, it was implicitly expected that every minister of finance should have at least read the 1st volume, or at least have an aide who has knows all three by heart. That's where you get all your Pikettys from btw.
Adam Hall
If pic related actually did happen, I would never be a socialist
John Sanchez
Yeah but productive people like Philip Green need that money more.
Also I don't know whether the fact that it's a daily express article is really funny or really sad.
Nathan Moore
Can some Brits shed light on how this happened?
Justin Jenkins
People bought the council homes in which they were living.