jadis

The view I represent, at least for the sake of this conversation, is as follows: the Marxian critique of capitalist exploitation and, more broadly, of capitalism is for the most part hard to argue with.

The problem with Marxism is the lack of theory of political power, or a theory of governance. What happens after the bourgeois rule of the factory owners and their elected representatives is overturned is that the power structure defaults to being centralized in the hands of the very, very few, and the bit where they spread it around later never arrives. What you get is a society defined not by competition, neither by collaboration, but by coercion, a coercion that, if nothing else, is at least much more blatant and visible than the economic coercion by the so-called invisible hand of capital.

This is why I'm talking about power structures rather than economic systems. If an able Marxist can dismantle this argument, great. I'm all for minimizing misery and not so sure about the bit where immutable human essence dictates that we all desire Mcnuggets in the suburbs.