Comment Marx was spot-on about Capitalism (Score 1) 1271
It's sad that you can't have a discussion about Marx's philosophy without having to qualify that you aren't a communist. I feel like any time I discuss Marx, I'm forced into being defensive.
That said, it's a real shame that things are that way because IMO Marx's greatest contribution to the world of political philosophy was NOT communism but rather his assessment and critique of Capitalism which, for all intents and purposes, is spot-on. Essentially, he believed Capitalism was a necessary evil that would bring immense positive technological changes to the world, but that would ultimately be unsustainable. It is at that point that he believed people's minds would begin changing in a direction that would facilitate communism. In a modern context, he was essentially foreshadowing the outsourcing of labor. Labor will constantly be moved to markets that have lower standards of living and a lack of unionization, but eventually everybody's standard of living will be raised by that process. It's at that point that workers will realize they are the real owners of everything and will become uncooperative with the "powers that be" aka the bourgeois.
And, FWIW, it's a shame that most people don't realize that Marx did not believe that Communism was the best form of society, he just believed it was the inevitable direction it would go. He actually believed that a "simple trade" economy is the perfect way of life, aka pre-industrialized America.