Why Marxist ideology is useful till today?

19 June 2014



Marxism is not dead. It is a useful tool to analysed various condition in social,economy and even culture.The method of analysis allows the birth of other others ideas such as social democracy,Keynesian economics,institutional economics ,welfare capitalism and others. It is the first ideology that popular and look at workers as the focus on the economy. There’s a few reasons why Marxism tool is still useful.

1.       Historical approach

                Marxist use the method of historical approach of analysing the problem. He predicted that the free market system will collapse and in crisis. This will lead to the market taken over by the proletariat. It  is going to a dictatorship like a form of socialism where economic power was in the hands of the majority. However ,Marx wrote little about the detailed of the communist economy that would replace capitalism,except it would be based on common ownership. However the crisis that the world had experienced force the scholars to take the element of Marx critique on capitalism seriously.

2.       Labour Theory Value

Karl Marx describes the famous description of the labour theory of value in his magnum opus Capital. Factory owners wanted to maximize their profit by reducing the cost of production. Marx said that the workers should be valued at the cost of production. All the other cost must be measured first, and the minimum and fair price for the workers' effort must be put in place,after that then the value of profit for producer can be determined. Marx says without the labour, any element may not have value at all. However, Marx did not deny the importance of supply and demand in the marketplace  would influence the values or price of good in the short run. This critique is the seed of minimum wages that most of developed country applies today.

3.       Class analysis


Class analysis is another tool that were useful on Marx critique. Many scholars used this tool to analyse certain economic, or social problem based on class analysis. It is the tool to see whether there is some kind of elite group that are manipulating the “lower” class of society. In politics, the leaders will use these tools to highlight problems in society and use it get support.  Government cronies , landlord and capitalist usually label by politicians as the source of conflict and term as Bourgeoise and people and workers are proletariat .This tool was used especially in democratic country to call amass support to change the government.Even though it would not lead to revolution as Marx predicted, it does the job that politicians want.

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