<story><title>Yanis Varoufakis: How I became an erratic Marxist (2013)</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/feb/18/yanis-varoufakis-how-i-became-an-erratic-marxist</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dandare</author><text>Why is it that there is not - nor never was - a single prosperous country build on Marxist principles? Is it possible that Marx&amp;#x27;s theory is nonsense and all the rich mixed-capitalism economies are right?&lt;p&gt;(Spoiler: I am from the former communist block.)&lt;p&gt;EDIT: 
(I hope you don&amp;#x27;t mind if I reply to everyone here in my original comment.)&lt;p&gt;Philosophizing on what Marx meant by what he said is lot like Bible-reading study. It is nice to speculate on what God meant when he said &amp;quot;You must kill those who worship another god [Exodus 22:20]&amp;quot; but it is more important to know how those killing in His name understood it. In our context, one look at Syriza&amp;#x27;s economic programme should end all discussions on what Marx really meant with the &amp;quot;dictatorship of the proletariat&amp;quot;. Raising wages, employing more people in the state sector, subventions, subsidies, free healthcare and education along with stiffening the labour market, nationalisation of industries and raising taxes up to 75%. That all obviously sponsored by new loans once they successfully ditch their current debt.&lt;p&gt;That brings us bak to my original point: there is not a single example of successful Marxist economy, regardless of what part of the Marxist wish-thinking you embrace.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>grey-area</author><text>&lt;i&gt;That brings us bak to my original point: there is not a single example of successful Marxist economy, regardless of what part of the Marxist wish-thinking you embrace.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is also no example of a successful free market economy, because no such thing exists.&lt;p&gt;The abstract concepts of socialism and capitalism tend to be polluted very quickly by the humans who inhabit and implement these systems. This means both types of system collapse without regulation - in the west these regulations are an extensive set of laws against monopolies, manipulating markets, insider information etc. and yet we still see regular very destructive whole-market crashes and speculative bubbles which devastate our economies. It&amp;#x27;s just the least worst system we know.&lt;p&gt;I can see how coming from a former communist block country where Marx was treated almost as a deity along with the likes of Lenin and Stalin would give you a healthy disrespect for him. However, Marx is a useful critique of capitalist dogma, even if you don&amp;#x27;t agree with his prescriptions for a solution, or the solutions people made up in his name. When he was writing capitalism in the west was in one of its most brutal and pure states and was an obviously flawed and exploitative system with little hope of improvement in life for the majority - as recorded by Engels for example at around the same time [1]. So don&amp;#x27;t mistake those who take his critique of capitalism seriously (like Varoufakis) for those who embrace every aspect of his thought or would support leninism or stalinism.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17306/17306-h/17306-h.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.gutenberg.org&amp;#x2F;files&amp;#x2F;17306&amp;#x2F;17306-h&amp;#x2F;17306-h.htm&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Yanis Varoufakis: How I became an erratic Marxist (2013)</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/feb/18/yanis-varoufakis-how-i-became-an-erratic-marxist</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dandare</author><text>Why is it that there is not - nor never was - a single prosperous country build on Marxist principles? Is it possible that Marx&amp;#x27;s theory is nonsense and all the rich mixed-capitalism economies are right?&lt;p&gt;(Spoiler: I am from the former communist block.)&lt;p&gt;EDIT: 
(I hope you don&amp;#x27;t mind if I reply to everyone here in my original comment.)&lt;p&gt;Philosophizing on what Marx meant by what he said is lot like Bible-reading study. It is nice to speculate on what God meant when he said &amp;quot;You must kill those who worship another god [Exodus 22:20]&amp;quot; but it is more important to know how those killing in His name understood it. In our context, one look at Syriza&amp;#x27;s economic programme should end all discussions on what Marx really meant with the &amp;quot;dictatorship of the proletariat&amp;quot;. Raising wages, employing more people in the state sector, subventions, subsidies, free healthcare and education along with stiffening the labour market, nationalisation of industries and raising taxes up to 75%. That all obviously sponsored by new loans once they successfully ditch their current debt.&lt;p&gt;That brings us bak to my original point: there is not a single example of successful Marxist economy, regardless of what part of the Marxist wish-thinking you embrace.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>drapper</author><text>I think most common way of thinking about Marx&amp;#x27; work today is that he was often right in describing what&amp;#x27;s wrong with the capitalism, but he was mostly wrong at the solutions.&lt;p&gt;Marx&amp;#x27; apologists point out, not without a reason, that one of the problems with the attempts of bringing his theories to life is that those attempts were done in countries not well suited to do it. Marxism, according to Marx, was supposed to be another step in the evolution of capitalism, yet it was tried in countries that didn&amp;#x27;t yet have any capitalism or had it in some very immature form, e.g. in post-tzar, soviet Russia.&lt;p&gt;On the other hand he was claiming that capitalism is unmaintainable and will fall by itself and that didn&amp;#x27;t happen either.</text></comment>