Unpopular Opinion

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Leftism is better without Marxist economics (vargar.org)

submitted 12 hours ago by wraekscadu@vargar.org to c/unpopularopinion@lemmy.world

29 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I don't think this is particularly unpopular outside of Lemmy, but still.

I consider myself a leftist primarily because:

I want every individual to have maximum possible freedom as long as its existence doesn't reduce the summation of the freedom of all individuals.
The current system doesn't do a good enough job at this as it permits power concentration.
The policies I believe would help achieve my "want" (the freedom thing) are generally considered "leftist".

Marx for his time, did some quite cool stuff. I really enjoyed his work in sociology. His critique of capitalism had merit.

THAT BEING SAID, labor theory of value is absolute dogshit. FOR THE TIME, sure, ok- nice effort. But TODAY, when marginalism has proven time and time again to be the more superior explanation to value, defending LTV is kinda lame.

I've never met a single professional economist who takes it seriously. Most of its defenders (in my experience) tend to be folks who have no economics background, and frankly aren't willing to have a good faith convo. I'm not trying to bandwagon effect + appeal to authority here, but this is just so reminiscent of anti vaxxers and flat earthers (at least for me).

I won't go into MY reasoning for preferring marginalist economics over LTV economics as there are much much better writeups for this than what I'm capable of. Here's one I could lazily find.

But yeah. In conclusion, I'm of the opinion that it would be much nicer if leftists got rid of Marx from their economics, and instead adopted economic models that better described reality.

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[–] OwOarchist@pawb.social 2 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (2 children)

Congratulations -- you're an anarchist. Or maybe a libertarian socialist.

(As mad as it might make certain people on Lemmy to hear this, it's absolutely possible to be a leftist without being a Marxist.)

[–] luthis@lemmy.nz 4 points 9 hours ago

Lol I was about to say, hello fellow anarchist!

[–] saltesc@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

I want every individual to have maximum possible freedom as long as its existence doesn't reduce the summation of the freedom of all individuals.

Literally libertarianism.

Anarchism is its own thing, but the obvious overlap is disallowing liberty to be encroached on by a state. Can definitely have a situation where a state is in place and acts as a mediator for equal rights and prevents an inbalance of liberty. But in there lies the ironic threat of having an entity drawing the lines for individuals and the cross-over with anarchism.

OP's view on economics shares it too. Especially that of social libertarianism which strongly opposes an imbalance of wealth or loss of social freedoms for capital. The core of Marxism's take on how to handle economics is no more anti-libertarian than the effects of matured capitalism. At the end of the day, a person's value and freedoms are tied to what they do to deserve it within the system. You must still sacrifice how you want to live for how you're supposed to live in order to "make it" under an ideology. Marx's theory of value is no different to the American Dream in this regard, despite it being almost entirely opposite in everything else.

It's not to say Marxism is wrong, but it always reminds me of John Lennon's Imagine. It sounds great if that's what you want the world to be like. But Lennon doesn't even entertain the idea that some people want religion, privacy, and individual sustainability in their lives. And they have the right to that as much as Lennon had his preferences.