I also thought of another work that I could probably add to this list. It is more of a history of western visitors to Marxist countries but I think it will apply to some degree.
It’s a very interesting book as it concerns intellectuals such as journalists, professors, civil leaders, etc and their journey to socialist countries. People like Lincoln Steffens who announced after his journey to the Soviet Union ‘I have seen the future…and it works!’
I don’t know: Mises himself attacks strawmans and/or ideas that the current flow of Marxists just don’t believe in anymore. The problem with reading ‘just’ the criticisms of Marxism to ‘demolish’ it, is that you can’t know if the author is attacking genuine Marx(ists) ideas, or just a vision of the Marx(ist) idea that he constructed in order to attack Marxism.
The last time Mises seriously addressed Marxism was over 50 years ago in his 1954 lecture which they made into a book Marx Unmasked. Mises gives a nice groundwork for actual Marxist theorists. You would need to read people like Rothbard, Gordon, Robert C Tucker and Hoppe to continue to present day Marxism. There are few actual Marxists left. The socialist movement is really just compromised of social democrats and those who judge justice and morality based on what they feel. I like to call them ‘dark matter socialists’ because they have no defined creedo or theory. They just make appeals to emotions and think something is unjust based on how hard it tugs their heart strings.
Gordon’s book attacks a particular brand of Marxism of which there is a certain controversy wether or not it really is ‘Marxist’ (i.e. the analytical ones).
I don’t know of any work of Hoppe or Rothbard in which he seriously adresses Marxism on his own contemporary terms. Attacking Marxist thought from Austrianism is easy (for one: Austrian School is correct and Marxist school is not), but for a Marxist it doesn’t do more than scratch the surface. Marxism (in my vision) is a deep entangled web of beliefs, in which there is no real ‘going to the core’. If you attack ‘just’ the labor theory of value, they can ‘safe’ it by their other ad hoc points of view.
I don’t know the Tucker book, but I’ll sure look in to it when I have the chance.
Such is the nature that Marxists must become in order to survive. They can no longer theorize dialectically due to the mistakes of Marx’s ‘immiseration of the working class’ theory
What do you mean by such a statement?
Marxism can be boiled down into three categories:
Labor theory of value
Historical materialism
Metaphysical alienation
The first two have been utterly obliterated even by mainstream academia. The third is just silly nonsense that has no meaning without the other two.
I actually looked up neophyte. For a person who does not have much time to read EVERYTHING about economics, which would be either the simplest, favorite or best out of personal opinion of those sources?
The people on that forum were indeed collectivists, they can barely defend themselves rationally, but bully, insult, and feel good about themselves through the power of a collective.
Sir Alexander Gray’s work, The Socialist Tradition. I put a link to the online version in my opening post. He is a brilliant stylist and raises timeless arguments against Marx.
Actually…yes because he has a critique in there about Proudhon and also one on Lassalle. It also has a chapter on Syndicalism and communitarian anarchists. He does a lot of critiquing of anarchists but he is referring to the traditional interpretation of collectivist anarchists. He basically covers anyone who is a notable socialist. Be they ‘scientific’ or utopian. State or stateless.
How much should I know about Marx before reading Bohm-Bawerk’s Karl Marx and the Close of His System? I’ve heard it requires some knowledge on what he said in Capital III, but I’m not sure.
Know this much: Karl Marx was ignorant beyond measurement. The most you ever need to know is how to obliterate his painfully ridiculous claims. Looks like you found the right book.
