The Insufferable Karl Marx
He is voted the greatest philosopher by BBC readers. In contrast, here is the classic opening line to Murray Rothbard's study of Marx: "The key to the intricate and massive system of thought created by Karl Marx is at bottom a simple one: Karl Marx was a communist."
Comments (11)
I would have thought that reason, knowledge, and truth would have made enough progress over the past 20 or 30 years that Marx at least would not have been designated "the greatest". Maybe the BBC readers who responded to the survey are not very representative of general public opinion in the U.K. I certainly hope so, but I am not holding my breath either.
Rothbard's 1990 essay on Marx and his thought has been mentioned/linked in this posting, and I note that I just finished reading Rothbard's 1970 essay, “The New Left, RIP�, in which he, in my opinion accurately, refers to the late 1960s counter-culture movement as "sewage". Since Marx had a significant influence on many of those 1960s counter-cultural types, and given the above vote, you can draw your own conclusions regarding my view of the culture, including overall intellectual development, of those BBC readers who voted in this capacity for Marx.
Published: August 2, 2005 2:45 PM
I don't know what's worse: Karl Marx topping the list, or seeing that neither Aristotle nor Thomas Aquinas made even the top 5. Indeed, Aristotle, at the 9th spot, seems lucky to have made the list at all.
Perhaps "Greatest" means "the one we most agree with."
Published: August 2, 2005 2:50 PM
I do not know in what fashion the vote was conducted, but if the instructions were to "choose only one person" it is understandable why Karl Marx recieved so many votes; to the layperson his name is most widely known, as opposed to say, Thomas Aquinas, etc.
To do this vote correctly, the voters should have to respond to each candidate regarding if they are familiar with the candidate and his works. This way, only more educated voters, who's opinions should weigh more, will weigh more than the average dupe who has only heard of Karl Marx.
Published: August 2, 2005 3:36 PM
I'm afraid that the poll was conducted on BBC Radio 4 which is the 'intellectual' radio service provided by the BBC. I'd say more than 80% of listeners are college educated. No surprise, really, that they should vote for Marx. I'd say the listeners could associate only Marx with tangible benefits; like their secure civil service jobs etc
Published: August 2, 2005 5:56 PM
As a daily listener of Radio 4, I seem to remember the actual number of votes cast with Melvyn Bragg's programme, In Our Time was very low. One of Bragg's promos for the show even made some sort of disclaimer to this point: Marx won, but the vote was so low that it could hardly be called representative. I can't find the exact numbers on the site.
Granted Marx winning the vote is disappointing, but at least the contest wasn't the "Greatest Brit" where Churchill won (like our "Greatest American" contest where Ronnie was the pop hero, followed by Abe, etc. ad nauseum!).
Published: August 2, 2005 9:18 PM
When a similar poll was conducted a few years ago to find the "greatest German", Karl Marx landed on 3rd position (after Konrad Adenauer, the first post WW 2 head of government, and Martin Luther). If I remember correctly, voters from formerly communist eastern Germany were especially supportive of Marx. Hitler BTW had not been allowed to be listed, maybe that helped to boost the vote for Marx ...
Published: August 3, 2005 10:43 AM
Karl Marx was not only among the greatest German philosophers, he was among the greatest human philosophers. He represents the very height of the Enlightenment, which is now disparaged by the neo-conservative right.
During his life, French "Marxists" dogmatized his ideas to the extent that Marx, himself, claimed, "I am not a Marxist." As explained so brilliantly by Sidney Hook in his "Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx: A Revolutionary Interpretation," Marxism is exactly the opposite of dogma. It is a methodology of understanding, and changing, the world.
The statement that "The key to the intricate and massive system of thought created by Karl Marx is at bottom a simple one: Karl Marx was a communist," is pretty meaningless, particularly after Stalinism appropriated the term. Communism (that is, with a big C), as it is currently understood, is the exact opposite of the communism that Marx talked about.
As Hal Draper exlains at length, Marx was the first to combine two distinct movements that had evolved over a very long time: democracy and communalism. Indeed, Marx arrived at the necessity for communal ownership of the means of production from his fierce support of democracy. He concluded that democracy required the communal ownership of the means of production, and that communal ownership of the means of production required democracy.
This inter-dependency is at the heart of Marx's vision of communism. Nothing in the world in the last 150 years has refuted this central theme at all. Furthermore, nothing has replaced his class analysis as a crucial basis for understanding (and changing) the world.
In the past 150 years, many Marxist thinkers have advanced his theories and analytical methods. Applying them to the Soviet Union, a new characterization of Stalinism as Bureaucratic Collectivism was possible. And others, such as Maxine Rodinson, were able to advance the political history of European Jewry, which was first undertaken in a systematic approach by Abrahm Leon. Economic theory has stood on Marx's broad shoulders, in spite of the fact that Samuelson dismisses him as a "minor post-Riccardian economist."
No single person in the last 500 years has so clearly and effectively impacted human beings' ability to understand, and change, the world. Those who attempt to discredit Marx tend to disregard Marx's marxism, and speak in magnificent ignorance of the Utopian and Dogmatic marxism that so many beleive is the real thing.
Published: August 11, 2005 2:07 PM
jrf wrote:
"The statement that "The key to the intricate and massive system of thought created by Karl Marx is at bottom a simple one: Karl Marx was a communist," is pretty meaningless, particularly after Stalinism appropriated the term. Communism (that is, with a big C), as it is currently understood, is the exact opposite of the communism that Marx talked about."
Oh jrf,
You act as if Rothbard hadn't read Marx, before decimating his conclusions.
He did use the small 'c' in describing him, you know.
If you'd read Rothbard, you'd know he attacked the man's ideas straight from his writings, only then linking them as obviously faulty in ultimate logic, and when examining the history of their application in nature.
Much as Rothbard does to any statist ideology.
Odd how you think mentioning Marx's love for democracy would help further his cause here.
Published: August 13, 2005 5:40 PM
fancyleprachaun wrote:
"Much as Rothbard does to any statist ideology.
Odd how you think mentioning Marx's love for democracy would help further his cause here."
I doubt any of you try to understand Marxism when you lable it as a "statist ideology".
If you understood Marxism you understand that the state is never a power in and of itself and only reflects economic class power. Marxism has been used as the basis for currents that span the statist-libertarian spectrum from stalinism to forms of anarchism.
Of course "democracy" is not favored by you Market cultists exactly because it implys collectivist and populist organization that would challenge the necessarally authoritarian individualism of capitalism.
Published: January 19, 2007 2:01 PM
I s'pose the standard reply to that Eardatch is: if the average person is too stupid to see the wonderful effects of Capitalism and instead use their voting to increase Government and Socialism, therefore engaging in a great game of national theft, then they must economically retarded. Since Capitalism is the great Wealth Creator and Producer and since the average person is financial dim to see it then they therefore shouldn't have the right to vote then. A Dictatorship which helped the economic geniuses to go about their business whilst repressing inteference from the Socialists who generally reside at the bottom of the pecking order and don't know better would probably have to be therefore the best solution.
Published: January 19, 2007 8:13 PM
Only amongst people who are convinced, for other reasons, that universal suffrage is bad, Sam. Such arguments were only entertained by the general intellectual community back in the days when the franchise was restricted to certain social ranks. Nowadays, it's a question of the genie and the bottle. Universal suffrage, with specifically delimited exceptions, is well ensconced.
Published: January 20, 2007 11:47 AM