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Originally Posted by deepsepia
The question is how dogmatically do you take the argument. Marx was looking at the world of the middle of the 19th century, particularly industrial workers in his native Germany. There are all sorts of extrapolations to very different societies -- particularly agrarian ones-- which don't make a lot of sense, for instance Mao who villified minor rural landowners as "landlords" or Stalin who persecuted similar folks as "kulaks". Trying to find a "class struggle" among a rural peasantry who were basically all pretty poor was not only pointless, it was damaging.
But as a historian, I find that Marx added a tremendous amount to how we understand a society. Before Marx, we really don't have a systematic analysis of societies based on "who owns what" . . .after Marx we do.
That's a huge contribution to understanding, even if you're not a "Marxist".
I don't think you can write a useful history of, say, slavery without asking the question "who owned slaves?", "what were they worth?", and "how did this effect free labor economically?"
Similarly, I don't think you can look at the US health insurance system without reference to class interests.
The classic battleground for Marxist vs liberal and other interpretations of history is the French Revolution; I don't take the Marxists as being "the last word" -- there are "classic" historians who have compelling interpretations too . . . but there's no way you could say that you can ignore people like Albert Soboul. And Marx himself writes a terrific analysis of Louis Napoleon, called "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon " --- which is really incisive reporting on contemporary events (for Marx).
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Yes, Marx made a great contribution to the development of sociology, no doubt. The same Berdyaev (he was once a Marxist) all his life thought of Marx as a genius. But I often see that the works of Marx make dogma, a "sacred cow". I prefer to look at the class struggle as simply one of the manifestations of the evil nature of man.
What do you think about the malthusianism/neo-malthusianism? Can this doctrines help to fight poverty?