Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to re: Not an Economics major either

Little town folk
ER — (archived)

Marx understood entrepreneurs perfectly well, he just didn't call them that. He called them the petite bourgeoisie. He considered them victims of capital as well, victims who refused to realize they were being oppressed because they had pretensions of becoming capitalists themselves.

BTW, Marxism wasn't born in Russia, Marx wasn't Russian, and he never even visited Russia. He was German, and it was 19th century English and German laissez-faire capitalism that he dissected. In fact, he did most of the research for Das Kapital in London and Lancashire. He did not reject classical capitalist philosophy, in fact, he was greatly influenced by and frequently cited the work of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, the classical economists most respected by modern capitalist economists.

You really ought to try reading him sometime, it's like reading the Bible, you don't have to believe it to benefit from it, and you really can't understand modern economic thought without some exposure to Marx. He even influenced his greatest enemies and critics, many of them, without them even realizing it.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petite_bourgeoisie
"Starting from the mid-19th century, the term was used by Karl Marx and Marxist theorists to refer to a social class that included shop-keepers and professionals. Though distinct from the ordinary working class and the lumpenproletariat, who rely entirely on the sale of their labor-power for survival, the petty bourgeois remain members of the proletariat rather than the haute bourgeoisie, or capitalist class, who own the means of production and buy the labor-power of others to work it. Though the petty bourgeois do buy the labor power of others, in contrast to the bourgeoisie they typically work alongside their own employees; and although they generally own their own businesses, they do not own a controlling share of the means of production."

Sound familiar? He's talking about us....

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