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Comment by slibhb | Hacker News Reader

In Marx's model, inequality indeed increases. But so does absolute poverty. Marx predicted a future in which a tiny handful of people own everything and subject their workers to slave-like conditions. The latter part hasn't happened; working conditions have improved dramatically over the past few centuries. The middle class, which most Americans are part of, is not something we see in Marx.

There's a fundamental lesson here that Marxists still don't seem to understand: an economy can have lots of inequality and very little poverty and, while not perfect, this is a good place to be.

> I too fail to understand why it's so polarizing for the 99.5% not benefitting from it.

Normal people see a rich guy and think "good for him, he worked hard, is smart and lucky" not "he isn't any better than me, it's unfair that he has more than me". For some reason Marxists think the second thought is admirable.

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Marx didn't really predict the slave-like conditions. He (and especially Engels) described the conditions that were created in industrialized countries (especially UK) by capitalism.

The marxist analysis had a major effect to how capitalism was reigned in to make the working conditions and living standards better. In the 20th century almost all European countries had major socialist and communist parties, often in power, and enacted major socialist policies. E.g. almost all concrete policy demands of Marx and Engels[1] have been implemented in most (western) countries and most of them are nowadays taken for granted.

Marxism has very little to do with envy you described. The luxuries aren't really a problem. The problem is the economic (and political) power of concentrations of capital whose interest it is to make working conditions worse. You're attacking a strawman, and most likely against your own interests.

[1] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/03/24.htm

My summary of Marx is accurate. In his view, working conditions and pay would get monotonically worse. That objectively has not happened.

If it's this clear, I'm sure you can give a quote?

Marx was clear that capitalism produces booms and busts, which implies non-monotonic development. He did predict that, when left on its own devices, capitalism will in the long term collapse on itself due to the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.

Collapses where huge governmental intervention in economy is needed happen quite consistently. E.g. in the USA the market mechanism collapsed in 1893, 1929 and 2008. And it is arguably still on central banks' life support.

What Marx and revolutionary marxism was maybe a bit too sceptical of was sustainability of social democratic states, known also as mixed economies. Altough it does seem that most mixed economies (e.g. the nordic countries) are regressing towards more capitalist domination.

Capitalism and socialism aren't some specific systems and no country is 100% either. Even USSR didn't say in its dogma that it has achieved full socialism, let alone communism.

Largely because most modern capitalist societies have at least half-implemented many of things Marx proposed. We don't live in a world where we can know whether Western European capitalism of the industrial revolution proceeded monotonically and so have not basis for objectivity for a conclusion that Marx was wrong.

Improving working conditions and wages clearly prove that Marx was wrong. It is ironic that, in some cases, Marxist arguments led to changes that disproved Marx's teachings.

Sorry, there is nothing in Marx's writting that says that working conditions cannot improve. I recall that in one of Das Capital's chapter in the first volume he tried several models of how capitalism could evolve. One of them expected that workers could get better wages... just so that they could consume more goods produced, but never owning the means of production or controlling the society and the power.

Yes there is. Marx views wages and conditions under capitalism as a race to the bottom that will only go down.

Marx admits better wages in two scenarios:

A) In the class struggle the workers conquer more rights using strikes, organizing themselves, etc. There are several pages in Marx's writing detailing this happening.

B) Like any other commodity, the labor force could became more expensive, entirely following capitalist rules. This would be the case if the price of food increases: you cannot pay for your workers less than the needed for their subsistence in a sustainable model, which means that increases in the living price requires more wages. But this also could happen in other scenarios, like if the society becomes more complex. If now the workers need more things to properly function just because the society is more complex and they require more things in order to produce more complex labor. Then they would get more wages to buy their computers, TVs, pay for education, etc. As a bonus, now these things can also be sold, helping capital to reproduce itself. Marx says that what the workers need in order to produce their own livelihood, the standard of living of their day, is socially and historically determined. This is not a fixed thing.

What Marx says is not that wages cannot improve in capitalism, but that the surplus value would always increase (except for changes caused by scenario A). Which was a perfectly correct prediction: if you check how worker productivity increased over time and how wages increased, you would notice that there is a gap that is always increasing. Moreover, the workers also could not own the relevant means of production: they always would need to sell their labor force.

I absolutely don't want to defend communism, I lived in Eastern Bloc and I prefer the flawed capitalism we have now.

But you are not really correct.

> The latter part hasn't happened

It's true that Bezos doesn't own the whole USA but 3 men has more wealth than 150 million people. https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahkirsch/2017/11/09/the-3-ric...

And the working conditions in Amazon warehouses are horrible. Workers in 50s or 70s had definitely better conditions and purchasing power. Despite all efficiency improvements, purchasing power of US workers is stagnating since 70s https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-...

The conditions improved because of Marx's teaching, without worker actions nothing would improve, it didn't happen out of capital owners' voluntary decision. It happened because of strikes and many were violently supressed. Just a few in USA: https://www.history.com/news/strikes-labor-movement

> Normal people see a rich guy and think "good for him, he worked hard, is smart and lucky"

Normal people are often hardworking (much more than capital owners) and sometimes smart as well. However to get rich, you must be lucky (usually you get born into wealth). Sometimes you need to be lucky just to get out of poverty.

I think majority doesn't care that their doctor is kinda rich and can go heli-skiing. They are angry that someone is so rich they can't even spend the money while his workers are struggling. https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

https://nypost.com/2019/07/13/inside-the-hellish-workday-of-...

It's not normal or beneficial for society that 3 men has more wealth than 150 million of people.

Working conditions get better and worse over time according to politics and economics. Marx predicted that they only get worse.

Conditions were in some ways better in the 50s. They are in some ways better today than in the 50s. And they're way better today than in Marx's lifetime. But my point is that there's no reason the pendulum can't swing back without the overthrow of capitalism, and that is contrary to Marx's teachings. Therefore it's true and ironic that Marxists played a role in improving working conditions.

In terms of class resentment, I think you're wrong. It's mostly upper-middle class people who hate the "ultra rich". And there's nothing unnatural about extreme inequality, though it's not desirable in every way.

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