There's no point holding back about it. I hate Marxists and that includes lite-Marxists. I've tried to find the good in them and treat them with the respect owed a sophisticated opponent, but it just hasn't worked. Very slim partial truths abound for Marxism; not much more than that though. They are the airheads of political philosophy. Keynesians, by comparison, are pure evil. I can at least respect that deep down Keynesians do not believe their garbage, that it is just a front to enhance the power of the ruling elite. The academic ones make good money off their scheme.
I've given Marxism more than a few passing glances, never came close to embracing it, but have given Marxist social commentators their time of day. In earlier times, I was quite impressed with their canny perception of societal ills such as huge wealth distribution gaps, corrupt business practices, the favored status granted to large businesses by the government, etc.
All of this was of course until I found the Austrian School of Economics, which diagnosed many of the same problems AND provided much more convincing explanations grounded in the a priori laws of economics. For example, the Marxists are sharp enough to notice some of the shenanigans involving the railway and oil monopolies over a hundred years ago, yet unlike the Austrian scholars, they mindlessly blamed it on the specter of free market capitalism. It was indeed a specter because there was nothing close to free market capitalism for those industries. Instead, the real-life explanation was that the banks, railroads, and oil folks (many of whom were the same across industries) received special regulations that entrenched their monopolies. If not a monopoly situation, then an industry cartel created by government regulations that can only be followed by a small group of wealthy companies (smaller competition gets destroyed). Furthermore, the fact that there is ever a favored status granted to certain companies over others should be a red flag that it IS NOT a free market, but rather a corporatist one.
Marxists are often able to see that something is not quite right, but then take the pre-schooler approach to explaining the causal mechanisms. I would like to think the difference between Austrian scholars and Marxists is mostly an epistemological one: the individual vs. class as the preferred unit of analysis. That would be fine, but it's not. Marxists are genuine idiots who cannot see farther than beyond their noses.
Anyone who is familiar with Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickeled and Dimed, understands that Marxism is alive and well amongst public intellectuals. The Cold War may have dealt a decisive blow to planned economics, but these individuals still linger. The economically illiterate Ehrenreich once waged a pointless, non-scientific, pre-concluded experiment to show that living off minimum wage was less than enjoyable (who would have guessed?). Nowhere in the analysis of her experiment does she consider the idea that the minimum wage laws themselves are the reason so many workers cannot get jobs or are de facto forced into miserable conditions. Nope, the answer is always the same: employers are evil and the minimum wage should be doubled (even if this still wouldn't come close to producing the bourgeois, entitlement lifestyle Ehrenreich thinks is a right). The work of Marxists like Ehrenreich demonstrates how tired, myopic, incomplete, and mis-leading this line of thinking really is.
Note: My writing in this article may seem a bit negative and attacking. This is obviously more of a rant than anything else. For a more academic take on the subject, visit the Mises Institute online.
I cannot complete this rant about Marxists without talking about the lite-Marxists I mentioned at the beginning. Much the way the neo-Keynesians are compared to old-fashioned-Keynesians, these half-baked intellectuals are several magnitudes more frustrating than their progenitors (and not because they are closer to being correct). If you read my earlier post on this blog, you could have probably gotten an idea as to how I feel about squishy, unprincipled thinkers. While their philosophical limbo may be easy to identify and rip apart, these tend to be the folks who are taken most seriously and can convince a lot of lay people of their views.
The brilliant Lew Rockwell really hit the nail on the head once again as it pertains to the fellows I'm discussing. In his article, Down with the Rich, Again?, he points out the glaring inconsistencies of the anti-rich lite-Marxists who at one time hated the wealthy for living extravagantly, but now hate them for not spending enough to help the economy (admittedly, some of them get mixed up with neo-Keynesians, who may in fact be consistent about spending like crazy even before the economic downturn).
I think Lew's article sums this point up well enough. The mindless pseudo-thinkers that dominate the media and universities possess no true beliefs about anything other than a knee-jerk hatred of the (mostly self-made) wealthy. Also, as far as universities go, I've noticed a trend away from the classically-Marxist professor toward a more moderate social-democrat who has it out for the free market due to the fact that the academic labor market is currently a nightmare for today's PhD holders. I'm certainly not surprised they hate competition since their competition is as stiff as it is (blame the state expansion of education credit, by the way). Academia is full of un-scholars who greatly appreciate the foundation of the American welfare state and only criticize it for not being even larger.
Overall, Marxists have had a much greater influence on that status quo than they would like you to believe. Marx had the nerve to complain about alienation of workers (during the 1840's) when most people still worked for themselves (until Lincoln changed that). Alienation of the so-called "working class" is a newer phenomenon. TODAY's world is full of bizarre and dysfunctional relationships between workers and owners because of the economic policies that have re-distributed the wealth toward a power elite, taking it out of the hands of creative entrepreneurs. Nowadays, most people have to put up with that half-wit boss who may have gotten his/her job solely through affirmative action or other preferential treatment. The evil bourgeoisie assailed by modern Marxists is the product of their own policy prescriptions. In summation, I can assure you that the folks in Washington have followed Marxist prescriptions a heck of a lot more than mine (or any other sensible, ethical individual for that matter).
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