World Finance: Marx's Revenge: How Class Struggle is Shaping the World
By Michael SchumanMarch 25, 2013
Karl Marx was supposed to be dead and buried. With the collapse of the
Soviet Union and China’s Great Leap Forward into capitalism, communism
faded into the quaint backdrop of James Bond movies or the deviant
mantra of Kim Jong Un. The class conflict that Marx believed
determined the course of history seemed to melt away in a prosperous
era of free trade and free enterprise. The far-reaching power of
globalization, linking the most remote corners of the planet in
lucrative bonds of finance, outsourcing and “borderless”
manufacturing, offered everybody from Silicon Valley tech gurus to
Chinese farm girls ample opportunities to get rich. Asia in the latter
decades of the 20th century witnessed perhaps the most remarkable
record of poverty alleviation in human history — all thanks to the
very capitalist tools of trade, entrepreneurship and foreign
investment. Capitalism appeared to be fulfilling its promise — to
uplift everyone to new heights of wealth and welfare.
Or so we thought. With the global economy in a protracted crisis, and
workers around the world burdened by joblessness, debt and stagnant
incomes, Marx’s biting critique of capitalism — that the system is
inherently unjust and self-destructive — cannot be so easily
dismissed. Marx theorized that the capitalist system would inevitably
impoverish the masses as the world’s wealth became concentrated in the
hands of a greedy few, causing economic crises and heightened conflict
between the rich and working classes. “Accumulation of wealth at one
pole is at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil,
slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite
pole,” Marx wrote.
A growing dossier of evidence suggests that he may have been right. It
is sadly all too easy to find statistics that show the rich are
getting richer while the middle class and poor are not. A September
study from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) in Washington noted
that the median annual earnings of a full-time, male worker in the
U.S. in 2011, at $48,202, were smaller than in 1973. Between 1983 and
2010, 74% of the gains in wealth in the U.S. went to the richest 5%,
while the bottom 60% suffered a decline, the EPI calculated. No wonder
some have given the 19th century German philosopher a second look. In
China, the Marxist country that turned its back on Marx, Yu Rongjun
was inspired by world events to pen a musical based on Marx’s classic
Das Kapital. “You can find reality matches what is described in the
book,” says the playwright.
By Michael SchumanMarch 25, 2013
Karl Marx was supposed to be dead and buried. With the collapse of the
Soviet Union and China’s Great Leap Forward into capitalism, communism
faded into the quaint backdrop of James Bond movies or the deviant
mantra of Kim Jong Un. The class conflict that Marx believed
determined the course of history seemed to melt away in a prosperous
era of free trade and free enterprise. The far-reaching power of
globalization, linking the most remote corners of the planet in
lucrative bonds of finance, outsourcing and “borderless”
manufacturing, offered everybody from Silicon Valley tech gurus to
Chinese farm girls ample opportunities to get rich. Asia in the latter
decades of the 20th century witnessed perhaps the most remarkable
record of poverty alleviation in human history — all thanks to the
very capitalist tools of trade, entrepreneurship and foreign
investment. Capitalism appeared to be fulfilling its promise — to
uplift everyone to new heights of wealth and welfare.
Or so we thought. With the global economy in a protracted crisis, and
workers around the world burdened by joblessness, debt and stagnant
incomes, Marx’s biting critique of capitalism — that the system is
inherently unjust and self-destructive — cannot be so easily
dismissed. Marx theorized that the capitalist system would inevitably
impoverish the masses as the world’s wealth became concentrated in the
hands of a greedy few, causing economic crises and heightened conflict
between the rich and working classes. “Accumulation of wealth at one
pole is at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil,
slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite
pole,” Marx wrote.
A growing dossier of evidence suggests that he may have been right. It
is sadly all too easy to find statistics that show the rich are
getting richer while the middle class and poor are not. A September
study from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) in Washington noted
that the median annual earnings of a full-time, male worker in the
U.S. in 2011, at $48,202, were smaller than in 1973. Between 1983 and
2010, 74% of the gains in wealth in the U.S. went to the richest 5%,
while the bottom 60% suffered a decline, the EPI calculated. No wonder
some have given the 19th century German philosopher a second look. In
China, the Marxist country that turned its back on Marx, Yu Rongjun
was inspired by world events to pen a musical based on Marx’s classic
Das Kapital. “You can find reality matches what is described in the
book,” says the playwright.
