Kristian Niemietz says he can’t be bothered to read Marx. Can I try and convince him otherwise?

For one thing, I suspect libertarians like him would be surprised by a lot of Marx. There’s astonishingly little in Marx about a centrally planned economy: if you want an argument for central planning, you should read that hero of the right, Ronald Coase instead (pdf). Marx was admiring of capitalism in some respects. It has, he wrote, given “an immense development to commerce” and has “accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals.” And I think you’d be surprised by just how much attention Marx paid to the facts: once you get past the first few chapters, there’s massive empirical work in Capital volume I*. And there are many differences between Marx and social democrats – not least of them being that Marx was no statist.

What’s more, many of the ideas associated with Marx were largely elaborations of his predecessors: Paul Samuelson called him a “minor post-Ricardian”. The labour theory of value, the interest in the division of income between classes and the idea of a falling rate of profit are all as Ricardian as Marxian. (The falling rate of profit (pdf) might be a good explanation for our recent slow growth and lack of capital spending, but let that pass).

I reckon there are three reasons libertarians should read Marx.

One is that Marx saw economics as a historical process. For him, one of the big questions was: “where did that come from?”

For him, capitalism – understood not as a market economy but one in which capital hired labour – was not a “natural” phenomenon but rather something that came into the world “dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.” It was founded on theft and slavery – the denial of the rights and freedom which libertarians celebrate. This poses a challenge: insofar as today’s economy is founded upon past injustices, how can they be regarded as legitimate? Many libertarians’ answers strike me as facile.

Also, our ideas don’t come from nowhere. They are instead a product of technical and economic circumstances: “the mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general.” If you want to hear Marxism at the BBC, ignore the news and listen instead to The Digital Human. Conventional economic research supports Marx in this. For example, Jeremy Greenwood has shown how the spread of household goods contributed greatly to increased gender equality. When we think about new technologies, we should remember that robots and AI won’t just change how we work (or whether we do) but also how we think.

One implication of this for libertarians is that they must ask: what material economic basis would make our ideas more popular? I’d argue that one such basis is greater equality, as this would diminish demands for statist regulation.

Another implication is that our ideas might be distorted. “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force” wrote Marx. This has been interpreted along crude conspiracist lines. But another (perhaps generous) reading is that our attitudes to the existing order can be shaped by cognitive biases which help to reinforce that order. Whilst I’ve interpreted this in a Marxian way, such an approach might also help reinforce Bryan Caplan’s work (pdf) on why voters reject free market policies.

A second reason for libertarians to read Marx lies in his view of the relationship between property rights and technical progress:

At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or — what is but a legal expression for the same thing — with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters.

This might speak to our current secular stagnation. Why are productivity growth and capital spending so weak? Might one reason be that the fear of future losses from competition is deterring investment? Or that excessively tight intellectual property laws are restricting innovation? Marx poses the question: how should property rights alter to foster growth? This surely should interest libertarians.

A third reason to read Marx lies in his attitudes to freedom. Marx’s main gripe with capitalism wasn’t so much that it was unfair but that it thwarted our freedom to develop our human potential. Work, instead of being a source of self-expression, is oppressive and alienating under capitalism:

Within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productiveness of labour are brought about at the cost of the individual labourer; all means for the development of production transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation of, the producers; they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour process.

A big reason for this, thought Marx, was that workers lack the power to fight for real freedom. The market, he wrote, is the realm of “Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham.” But, he continued, when we leave this “sphere of exchange of commodities” and enter the “hidden abode of production”, we see inequality and oppression:

He, who before was the money-owner, now strides in front as capitalist; the possessor of labour-power follows as his labourer. The one with an air of importance, smirking, intent on business; the other, timid and holding back, like one who is bringing his own hide to market and has nothing to expect but — a hiding.

Granted, working hours and conditions have improved since Marx’s day – but for many they remain oppressive for many.

In short, then, libertarians should read Marx because he poses them some questions which should sharpen their thinking. How can we defend property rights at the same time as defending a system which came into being by denying those rights? What material conditions are necessary for people to support freedom? How will new technologies shape our beliefs? Do current market structures (which are of course determined by the state) really maximize development? If not, how can they change? Do actually-existing markets merely enhance formal freedom, or are they conducive to the substantive freedom that Marx wanted? Can they be made more conducive? Are markets really a realm of freedom, or a means through which some exploit and oppress others? And so on.

If you look past tribal caricatures, perhaps libertarian thinking will be enriched by a consideration of Marx’s work.

* You should start Capital vol I at chapter 10, and read the first nine chapters last.