Was Karl Marx right?

[Music] Karl Marx is often described as one of the greatest thinkers of the 19th century his writings have inspired revolutions and generated centuries of fierce debate born in Prussia now Germany in May 1818 Marx believed that capitalism which was in its infancy at the time had serious flaws Marx claimed that in pursuit of profit capitalists would encourage their ideology that work is good leisure is bad and material things will make us happy embracing mass production depriving workers of job satisfaction at the same time exploiting the working-class he became involved in the communist League a small group of intellectuals who wanted to abolish the class system and spread wealth equally Marx wrote the communist manifesto in 1847 with his benefactor Friedrich Engels laying out the Marxist vision of a society where wealth was distributed evenly property is owned publicly and education is free for all but Marx was little known and little read at the time when he died in 1883 only eleven people attended his funeral after his death his ideas flourished based on the theory of Marxism came communism the realization of a stateless society where all are equal communism became a global movement but the utopian ideal of a fair and equal society failed to materialize communism terrorized and impoverished its subjects and slaughtered them in the tens of millions today capitalism dominates the world but many of Marx's criticisms have never been more relevant today the global disparity between rich and poor is striking Marx predicted that capitalism would lead to the rich getting richer and the poor staying Paul he was right he also predicted that capitalism would lead to boom and bust economics Marx predicted that capitalism would lead to globalization and that a handful of firms would have huge market dominance [Music] however Marx underestimated the ability of capitalism to make everybody richer by making products much cheaper since the 1980s the number of people in absolute poverty has fallen by about 1 billion he also got wrong the capacity of capitalism to reform itself by creating welfare states that redistributed wealth through taxation although there is a lot to learn from Marx his solution was far worse than the disease at the same time it can't be said that today's capitalism dominated by immense inequality and financial crises has triumphed [Music] you

Channel: The Economist

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Keywords: The Economist, Economist, Economist Films, Economist Videos, Politics, News, short-documentary, karl marx, who was karl marx, was karl marx right, the economist, economist, economist videos, economist films, communism, communist, capitalist, capitalism, socialism, labour, das kapital, production, wealth, proletarian revolution, social classes, capital, money, marx, kapitalismus, friedrich engels, the communist manifesto, kommunismus

Id: TMmDebW_OBI

Length: 3min 22sec (202 seconds)

Published: Fri May 04 2018