Question Everything

Based on posts in this thread on flag:

In his lifetime Marx was not that important, he was just one of many radical intellectuals. His main claim to fame is that a whole bunch of totalitarian states used him to legitimize their rule. As a result lots of people read Marx and few of his contemporaries and think that he's saying lots of new things. He didn't and he never claimed he did. Marx built off the works of others, he was not the great genuis who invented all sorts of ideas as most contemporary admirers portray him. If a different faction had come to power in 1917 few would have ever heard of Marx. He'd be like Blanc or Blanqui - the only people who wouldv'e heard of him would be people who study the history of socialism, like me. Try looking Marx up in an encyclopedia from the 1890s - he's not that important.

Marx got many of his ideas from other people. Know what convinced Marx that private property should be abolished? What is Property? by Joseph Proudhon, the father of modern anarchism.

"the real Proudhon declares that he does not pursue any abstract scientific aims, but makes immediately practical demands on society. ... Proudhon makes a critical investigation -- the first resolute, ruthless, and at the same time scientific investigation -- of the basis of political economy, private property. This is the great scientific advance he made, an advance which revolutionizes political economy and for the first time makes a real science of political economy possible. Proudhon's treatise Qu'est-ce que la propriété? is as important for modern political economy as Sieyês' work Qu'est-ce que le tiers état? for modern politics. ... Not only does Proudhon write in the interest of the proletarians, he is himself a proletarian, an ouvrier. His work is a scientific manifesto of the French proletariat" - Karl Marx

"as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists, the economic economy of the classes. What I did that was new was to prove:
(1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production (historische Entwicklungsphasen der Production),
(2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat ,
(3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society." - Karl Marx

Marx's explanation of surplus value, and many other ideas, is poorly written and wrong. Ever read Capital? It's not written in a style that's easy for ordinary people to understand, even though it could be. The idea of surplus value did not originate with Marx (nor did he claim to invent it), Ricardian socialists had already been using it. The labor theory of value was invented by Adam Smith. The labor theory of value isn't even necessary to show that capitalism is exploitative. Exploitation (and "surplus value") comes from the power the capitalist has over the production process not from some magical "labor theory of value." The Marxist theory of history is completely bogus and eurocentric (China, Africa and the western hemisphere have completely different histories from what the Marxist theory says).

Marx's domination over radical thought has had a negative effect on the revolutionary movement and it's time for it to end. The Marxist movement completely failed, it's time to ditch Marx entirely and try something different. There are many other thinkers (and not only anarchists) who had superior ideas, both past and present. Check out Marx: A Radical Critique by Alan Carter - it's got a good explanation of the many holes in Marx's philosophy (and not only the "dictatorship of the proletariat").