[drapper]

I think most common way of thinking about Marx' work today is that he was often right in describing what's wrong with the capitalism, but he was mostly wrong at the solutions.

Marx' 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't yet have any capitalism or had it in some very immature form, e.g. in post-tzar, soviet Russia.

On the other hand he was claiming that capitalism is unmaintainable and will fall by itself and that didn't happen either.

[dragonwriter]

> Marx' 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.

Or, more to the point, that an entirely different theory was created (Leninist vanguardism), associated itself with Marxism ("Marxism-Leninism") despite the fact that it rejected the basic foundation of Marxism, and that most of the criticism of "Marx's" solutions that is done focusses on criticism of the actions of Leninist vanguardism and further developments of that theory, which not only isn't applied in the situation to Marx's solutions expressly apply, but also aren't Marx's solutions.

> On the other hand he was claiming that capitalism is unmaintainable and will fall by itself

The 19th Century system Marx was criticizing as "Capitalism" largely has been replaced with a very different one, the modern mixed economy (which often gets called capitalism, but isn't the system Marx criticized) distinguished from capitalism in a number of ways, some of which come straight out of the Communist Manifesto (centralization of control of credit through central banks, universal public education, significant progressive taxation on income.)

If the Communist Revolution is looked at as something more like the Industrial Revolution than, say, the French Revolution, one could argue that something not altogether unlike it has been going on since the time of Marx, and that all the places that treated "Marxism-Leninism" as a state religion just distract from it.

[felipeerias]

One issue with the more traditional marxist point of view is that it tends to treat "capitalism" as a permanent, monolithic entity. The capitalism that Marx observed in places like Manchester in the XIX century effectively fell a long time ago, along with the British empire and the steam machine. If one wants to translate Marx's principles to the modern world, a very critical eye is needed. I believe that is what Varoufakis is trying to do here.

[jcrei]

"On the other hand he was claiming that capitalism is unmaintainable and will fall by itself and that didn't happen either" yet...