Wednesday, March 14, 2007
This Day in History
On this day in 1883, German political philosopher Karl Marx died in London. A great intellect who often worked 18 hours a day in the library of the British Museum, his lengthy German sentences are often impenetrable. Although his criticism of capitalism was cogent, his economic solution, running, as it does, counter to human nature, is responsible for more death and suffering than any other political philosophy. His central concept of dialectic materialism remains at best a monumental failure of intellect, understood, if at all, by very few and useful to none. His work seems now a wrong turn down a very bloody and blind alley.
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 1:04 AM 
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I thankfully can't read Marx in his original German, but agree with your criticism of his economic solutions - that it is destined to fail since it runs counter to human nature. Or, as I have always thought, it assumed that man was perfect, or at least easily perfectable. And, of course, we aren't. Capitalism works because it is based on the trait that Marx thought to eradicate - human greed.
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