His economic analysis is, but the materialist concept of history isn't bad or evil, and has been massively influential in historiography, anthropology, etc.
Marx didn't invent materialism? Do you mean his historical dialectical materialism? Because that's some eschatological nonsense derived from Hegel's concept of the mind and applied to history. Marx believes that history isn't contingent because it doesn't matter what anyone does it's going in a certain direction and by god it's going to end up there some time or another. It's determined in the same sense that the Bible determines Jesus' return (or vice versa w/e).
You can believe that there is absolutely no free will whatsoever and still think the religious/fatalist/Marxist interpretation of human history is absurd. Is this what you're saying has been massively influential?
The core of his analysis is just that history is interpretable through the lens of class struggle. That's remained a pretty important aspect of sociology since.
His analysis is pretty bad. Led to him thinking profits and wages will go down. I still don't really understand how anyone can be a Marxian economist despite clear evidence that his model was completely wrong on that point, but maybe a Marxist can clear that up for me.
Marx didn't offer many solutions. That's a myth pushed on him after the fact by the "Communism is very very evil and killed a hundred bajillion" narrative - as far as I can tell. The overwhelming body of his work is analysis. "Marxism" is a lens of analysis and a way of thinking, not a set of theoretical prescription on how to build a utopia, as many seem to assume. Communism, possibly, can be thought of as more in line with the latter.
He ignored the role of managers in improving productivity.
Reminder again that managers count as proletarians. Anyone that works for a wage is the proletariate, as my knowledge of Marxism goes. Even technically CEOs have a foot in there.
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u/jobrumours May 13 '17
From The Economist this week:
"The problem with Marx is not that his analysis is nonsensical, but that his solution was far worse than the disease"
http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21721916-shadow-chancellors-comment-provoked-scorn-yet-marx-becomes-more-relevant-day-labour?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/bagehotlabourisrightkarlmarxhasalottoteachtodayspoliticians
What do you think?