Current Relevance of Areas of Marx's Theories

With the collapse of the Soviet Union it has become fashionable to discuss the teachings of Karl Marx as a dead philosophy or philosophical dead end. While there are particular areas of Marx's theories which clearly need reexamination, such as his views on gender, clearly there remains much relevance in his concepts for our age. In material terms the world has not completely abandoned the Marxist experiment. China certainly has not abandoned its Marxist experiment (and represents the largest government in the world in terms of population governed). In the Middle East, Muslim philosophers and economists still embrace Islamic economics whose basis lies on the Marxist doctrine regarding the equal distribution of wealth. Even in the United States, the bastion of capitalism and class competition, there exists relevance for Marxist ideology and observations. Particularly when one considers some of our most pressing social issues such as the fact that over 44 million Americans have no health care.

While Marxist experiments might be dead in many parts of the world, perhaps one of the remaining important uses of Marxist doctrine is in terms of social study and historical commentary. Karl Marx emphasized the conflicts between bourgeoisie, proletarian, and aristocratic classes and we still tend to look at society in these terms. For example, our current president and his Republican opponent in the last election both ran on a platform of legislating new aid packages f

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possibly be overestimated in terms of importance concerning how we measure our society and identify those who live in it. This theory still holds monumental importance today even in our political process. American society is changing radically at the end of the twentieth century from industrial based to information/technology based. To some this might suggest the end of relevance of Marx's intellectual relevance. After all, Richard Miller (1994), in his essay, "Social and Political Theory: Class, State, Revolution," states that in Marxist terms society is identified as capitalist: If the production of material goods is dominated by the use of wage labor, that is, the use of labor power sold, to make a living, by people controlling no significant means of production and bought by people who do have significant control over means of production and mostly gain their income from profits on the sale...(Carver,1994, 55) Nevertheless Marx still sets the guidelines for understanding this transition. We now talk about society in terms of controlling means of production but now it is information which is the most important commodity verses raw goods and materials. In fact, in the United States it is possible to argue that Marx's meth

Category: Government - C