Here´s a woman (on Facebook) trying to push us to read Marx` “Capital”. Once again, the vivid comment section is virtually all male; there are practically no women engaging in the discussion. What can be held credit to Marxism at least, is that it provokes discussion that can become quite sophisticated at times (though it does not do so among women).
As one guy in the comment section notes, it is actually not that clear how “dialectical” Marxism actually is, I have actually never understood the whole fuss Marxism makes about dialectics, and I have not truly witnessed Marxists thinking dialectically or in a truly critical fashion. Their “dialectics” rather seems an intellectual template to justify a reasoning and an outcome they were already advocating in advance and trying to solidify it. What is even more, they appear to like dialectics because they consider themselves as the oppressed, the excluded, i.e. the antithesis and the negative; and dialectics seems to ensure them that they will have their “revenge” over the oppressors, and that makes them feel good. At any rate, dialectical thinking is actually a somehow simplified thinking, giving the complexities that arise within the empirical world. Maybe you should not be too proud of yourself when you are just able to think dialectically. That is not a very elevated state of mind.
The greatness of Marxism and of “Capital” – and the attribute of all great works – is that it establishes a thinking and pushes it to the limits. It opens up a space and colonialises it entirely. Therefore it seems to be both universal and it seems to make you able to “see beyond the horizon”. “Capital” is insightful in many ways – and it also is convoluted and irritating in many ways. The fatal flaw within “Capital” is that it does not truly acknowledge that the interplay of economic factors can go into various directions and push an economy into various directions, often in an unpredictable (i.e. “undialectical”) manner (this also accounts for societies in general on which Marxism has an equally flat perspective). Though Marx was somehow aware of this in “Capital”, he nevertheless favours a fatalistic perspective on capitalism as being constitutive of a world inherently coming down.
Indeed, Marxist dialectics all too often appears as something rather mechanical than dialectical. And dialectics is not the only intellectual heuristics Marx` reasoning in “Capital” was based upon. He was actually also thinking within a deterministic and mechanical framework in the tradition of Descartes and Newton. (And, as an admirer of Charles Darwin, Marx flattered himself with coming up with an “evolutionary” theory of societies and economies – although we do not know how serious he actually meant that; Darwin at least reportedly considered the application of this evolutionary biology upon the study of societies as a non-starter (bourgeois economist and Marx critic Joseph Schumpeter would later praise Marx for establishing an evolutionary and historic perspective within economics however).) Today, Marxists (and others) like to ridicule mainstream economists for trying to do economics as a sort of physics. Yet it was Marx who actually had the same thing in mind.
Economies and societies are considered too “complex” and “dialectical” to be studied in the fashion of physical systems (although physical systems frequently and usually get that complex and dialectical all alike). Yet the main reason why sociology and economics cannot be done in the style of physics is that nature is based on symmetries and conservation laws, i.e. that certain properties like energy, momentum or electric charge must remain constant. From the conservation laws you can generate functions that describe developments and interactions of physical objects. Yet in neither societies nor economies you do have conservation laws and respective properties. Whilst in economics you have identities (like “spending = revenues” or “savings = investment”), but these are mirrored identities that appear within economic accounting, and nothing that equates to conservation laws. Therefore, economics and sociology can never be done in the fashion of physics. Note also that many phenomena in the domain of physics yet cannot be (effectively) computed and will probably remain beyond the scope of any mathematical calculus indefinitely.
The main concepts within “Capital”, the labour theory of value and the theory of surplus value, are opaque, and their true validity will probably remain undecidable forever. There are consistent solutions to the transformation problem and despite the intellectual irritations and philosophical problems it causes, the labour theory of value can be translated into a consistent logical and mathematical form and be made operational. Logical consistency however does not mean that something is empirically true or applicable. Also mainstream economics is logically consistent and its concepts can be made operational (to certain extends).
Marginalism, on which mainstream (or “bourgeois”) economics is based upon, appears more intuitive than the labour theory of value though. Yet it faces limitations alike, it establishes a paradigm that is equally grandiose and boastful in its ambitions as is Marxism, and its basic concept of “utility” is actually no less “metaphysical” than is “value”. While mainstream economics emphasizes consumption and (the beauty) of exchange, Marxism emphasizes (the ugliness and beauty) of production. While mainstream economics looks upon capitalism as something basically harmonious and functional, Marxism views capitalism as something basically conflictual and crisis-prone (Keynesianism somehow is a mixture of both, it regards capitalism as something unstable, but it is a consumption-based theory).
Both mainstream and Marxist economics (and Keynesianism) are epistemologies. They can be integrated into each other to a certain extent, but at the deep level they will remain conflicting. Their status yet remains undecidable, as we still do not know whether capitalism ontologically is basically something harmonious, or disharmonious. We do not know whether capitalism is cosmos or chaos, whether it refers to the metaphysics of Parmenides or the metaphysics of Heraclitus (naturally it will refer to both, which is why I like to introduce the metaphysics of the chaosmos).
More generally, societies, when regarded as something “harmonious”, can be viewed upon the epistemology of structural functionalism. Marxism, in a way, establishes a seeming contrast, or a “dialectical opposite”, of a “structural dysfunctionialism”. Yet they are both systematic approaches, and they ontologically regard societies (and economies) as “systems”. Yet maybe, in broader terms, societies and economies aren´t “systems”. Whilst they may be systems, they may nevertheless change, transform or undergo metamorphoses that make them become actually unrecognisable to what they had been before. Maybe we should try thinking about stuff beyond the conceptual scope of systems. This seems difficult, and maybe cannot even be done within science or philosophy. It may be the domain of artists, writers and of the literary genius (the Deleuze-guattarian philosophy of the rhizome, as something that goes beyond the notion of a system, is to a good deal literature).
(Funny enough, it is sometimes suggested to view the work of bold and super systematic (and unintelligible) philosopher Hegel and its predictions about the “end of history” not as actual philosophy, but as – literature. Equally, the charisma of Marxism and of “Capital” that forever remains, despite all its shortcomings, may be that it is a strong and essential, a necessary piece of “literature” about class-based societies and economies. As such, it is likely to remain as long as class-based societies and economies remain – and should class-based societies actually go away one day, the glory of Marx will be even greater, as that of the original prophet. Marx was, last not least, a literary genius and a stylist.)
A dual and conflicting aspect of Marxism is that it is both undogmatic, specific and related to specific problems and problem areas, yet also tries to be universal, doctrinaire, and wildly imaginative and speculative. Whilst Marx often was working on specific problems and specific societies in specific historic situations, it might be attributed to Engels to actually having established “Marxism” as a universal ideology with a missionary zeal in the “Anti-Dühring” (which, nevertheless, had the full approval of Marx). As the latter, it might have become intellectually, rationally, empirically falsified, but it will continue to haunt the imagination. As the former, when applied properly, it will remain valid all alike.
Mainstream economics (at least Lucas/DSGE-based macroeconomics) somehow accepts that it cannot get a grasp on the entire economic reality, and in a way, it does not even try to. It considers it the best way to look at an economy in a highly idealised way and to construct models that are internally consistent and are based on a conceptual apparatus (whilst DSGE-based macroeconomics is based on the conceptual apparatus introduced by Léon Walras, Keynesianism is based on the conceptual apparatus introduced by Alfred Marshall; whereas Marxist economics has its own conceptual apparatus). This lack of realism and neglect concerning the external consistency of their models frequently gets mainstream economists ridiculed from the outside. However, the many debates about the internal consistency of their theories and approaches, and their permanent confusion of taking internal consistency for external consistency all too easily, has been quite prevalent within the Marxist spectrum alike. It might be that mainstream economics has become less dogmatic and more diverse more recently though, especially in the aftermath of the world financial crisis of 2008. At any rate, it is quite difficult, if not impossible, to construct a perfectly externally consistent model when what you are studying is actually not a system. Therefore it seems more applicable to employ internally consistent models to get a grasp on at least some phenomena and parts of reality.
In an important way, it is particularly the left-wingers who always talk and complain about “the system”. The “system” clearly is an intellectual and emotional fetish they employ. Whilst there are systems in this world (and actually countless systems), I encourage to think beyond the concept of systems. “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro´ narrow chinks of his cavern”, says William Blake/Jim Morrison. Of course, with infinity you cannot make models and they cannot be computed. Yet when the doors of perception are cleansed, you sense that systems are relative. Maybe we need a theory of relativity for the social realm (which may bear some resemblance to a dialectical approach, but is something different).