| Marx was proven wrong even in his own lifetime. For example, he wrote: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour... >But even if we assume that all who are directly forced out of employment by machinery, as well as all of the rising generation who were waiting for a chance of employment in the same branch of industry, do actually find some new employment – are we to believe that this new employment will pay as high wages as did the one they have lost? If it did, it would be in contradiction to the laws of political economy. We have seen how modern industry always tends to the substitution of the simpler and more subordinate employments for the higher and more complex ones. How, then, could a mass of workers thrown out of one branch of industry by machinery find refuge in another branch, unless they were to be paid more poorly? and >To sum up: the more productive capital grows, the more it extends the division of labour and the application of machinery; the more the division of labour and the application of machinery extend, the more does competition extend among the workers, the more do their wages shrink together. Yet by the 1860s, real wages and standard of living had already risen substantially from the level they were at when Marx penned the above. He was a totally irresponsible and self-absorbed demagogue whose lies wreaked terrible damage upon society. To see you elevating him in such a manner is disappointing to say the least. |