With the polite and well–scrubbed ghost of Karl Marx now making regular appearances on television talk shows and being given column space in the mainstream press the apparent question is: what does it mean? While broadening the realm of economic concern to include criticism of conspicuous economic dysfunction might serve a useful social purpose, is it Marx the political economist or Marx the revolutionary who is being resurrected and furthermore, are these dissociable? The question is worth asking because a lot of partial solutions to the issues of dramatically skewed income and wealth distribution and the power they have over Western governments have been put forward but few if any have been implemented. In fact, in meaningful ways the trajectory of Western political economy is away from social reconciliation. A new New Deal was conceived by center-left economists and put forward in 2008 – 2009 and a small, ill conceived and largely ineffectual economic stimulus program was all that came of it. And a wide variety of well conceived and socially constructive policy recommendations continue to be put forward with apparently diminishing prospects for their being implemented. So assuming for the moment the Marx-lite revival underway has content behind it, what is the goal of clear analysis if it is relegated to column inches rather than social action?
full: http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/25/marx-lite-meets-the-investor-class/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
