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A comment on Whistleblower uncovers London police hacking of journalists and protestors. Parent comment

Re:Whistleblower uncovers London police hacking of journalis... by anigbrowl on Wednesday April 19, 2017 @04:03PM (#14151252)
Well, this is the basic problem. Marx and Engels had a vision of society governed by the better angels of our nature, not to mention a relatively simple economic understanding of the world due to the technological limitations of their day.

Karl Marx died in 1883 so while he was probably able to make guesses about how steam engines would be deployed in the future he never lived to see an actual automobile. Adam Smith's economic insights were likewise somewhat limited by the technology of his day; one has to be careful not to attribute knowledge that we only enjoy with hindsight to economic theorists of earlier eras.

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Re:Whistleblower uncovers London police hacking of journalis... by ue_ on Wednesday April 19, 2017 @06:46PM (#14152467)
I don't think that most of Marx's analysis of capitalism falls flat in the face of modern developments; some of it of course do (such as his theorised 'Asiatic mode of production' which didn't exist) but for the most part I think a Marxian analysis is a cogent one, at least from what I've seen. Marx was in a good position to envisage how technology would develop, having seen the result of the industrial revolution himself. Marx intended for his analysis of capitalism to hold regardless of time frame; arguably, and indeed into the future beyond capitalism taking the form of the theory of historical materialism.
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