Is Karl Marx or Max Weber right in terms of capitalism’s future?
Is Karl Marx or Max Weber right in terms of capitalism’s future?
No.
First, it is hard to consider Max Weber. His thoughts involve many, and as far as I am concerned, unrelated topics driving his understanding of capitalism (like religion). As a result, I think his understanding of capitalism is unnecessarily distorted. So I will not consider him here.
Instead, I simply assert that …
Capitalism is an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
Marx’s point of view is relevant, however.
Marx’s basic belief was that capitalism would destroy itself by creating the conditions wherein workers would no longer feel they had a stake in the game and so would revolt. Marx may have been off in his prescription (communism) for what ails the world, but as an economic diagnostician, he has few equals.
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I suppose one can see this thinking in the Marx manifesto directly.
Tangentially, I agree with Marx. There is a problem.
- Again, capitalism is the private ownership of property. Capitalism does not change over time. Thus the concept of private property is not the problem.
- However, people do change over time. This, I believe, is THE actual problem.
It is a cycle –
Problem-solving is meritorious and thus valuable. Value creation produces wealth. Wealth produces entitlement and, consequently, a cessation of problem-solving. Entitlement thereby creates hardship and a collapse of merit. Eventually, hardship necessarily brings a return to problem-solving. And the cycle begins anew.
Therefore, as I see it, capitalism does not facilitate its own collapse; human entitlement does.
Machiavelli saw the same, though he used different terms:
Thus they [societies] are always descending from good to bad and rising from bad to good. For virtue gives birth to quiet, quiet to leisure, leisure to disorder, disorder to ruin; and similarly, from ruin, order is born, from order, virtue; and from virtue, glory and good fortune.
Maybe, though I think he didn’t fully understand it, Marx discovered the same problem. Could it be that Historical Materialism is Marx’s indictment of entitlement? If so, I find it remarkable.
The bottom line is that capitalism is not the problem. Intellectually undeveloped people are.
Communism/socialism does not remedy this human frailty because it does not keep humans problem-solving. This is where Marx utterly misunderstood reality.
As a result, millions of people would consequently die.
