A Marxist Who Defends Capitalism

Craig J Bolton - 12/16/2007

The author is correct about Marx's theory of history - in it capitalism was a necessary stage of great productivity leading to the creation of the material conditions for full communism. However, the author is wrong [probably because of some ambiguity in Marx's and Engels' writings] about the results of all of this. The result was that you ultimately had a society that had the physical/material potential of being Star Trek but for the one remaining monopoly capitalist whose ownership rights had to be "dispossessed." Hence, no "replacement of capitalism by a yet more human SYSTEM" was necessarily. Rather, capitalism would be replaced by the lack of system that comes from the end of scarcity.
That is what people don't get about Marx, he was very sci fi [and, of course, most of his predictions about the path of technological change were dead wrong].