Remembering an enduring and critical insight from Karl Marx
It is important to see Karl Marx in the pantheon of philosophers, economists and sociologists. One should not be a Marxist any more than an anti-Marxist. It is better to see him as part of a Western philosophical continuum which one may say starts with Hume and Locke, works through Smith and Ricardo, flows through Marx and then leads into Keynes and Hayek. It is not even progressive in the sense that later born persons are "better" than the previous ones. Each has an insight worth exploring and analyzing and recognizing the limits in each person's approach.
Here is an excellent article that helps us understand an important and enduring insight from Marx, which is to remember that labor may have some aspects in common with commodities, but it is a peculiar type of commodity since labor consists of people. The author of the article goes by the Internet moniker, Sandwichman, but he is an economist named Tom Walker who at one time was an analyst for the government of State of Massachusetts. At least, I think that's the same fella...(UPDATE: Sandwichman corrected me in the Comments that he is a professor at a university in Canada, near Vancouver, B.C. and never been in Massachusetts.)
Anyway, it's a great article published today and is called "Labor is (not) a commodity."
posted by Mitchell J. Freedman @ 7:13 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Thanks, Mitchell,
I've never been to Massachusetts. I teach Labour Studies at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, (near Vancouver) Canada
Ah, I shouldn't have tried to guess and deduce on that one...I'll correct the mistake in the post...
I heartily agree with your position that Marx is an important contributor to Western thought but shouldn't be worshiped as the Alpha and Omega. There are Marxists who are unable to see or admit the congruence between Marx's thought and, say, Keynes's or to take a more recent example, Elinor Ostrom. I am always amazed, though, when I read something by Marx at how fresh he managed to be 150 years ago!
Marx's other great insight is that money masks the continued and often feudal relationships between and among people, particularly employer and employee.
Michael Harrington was one of the greatest explicators of Marx and he is sadly neglected. His analyses in his books "Socialism" and "The Twilight of Capitalism" are to me compelling reading.
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