karl marx grave at highgate cemetery , originally uploaded by atharabidi . I was talking to a young man after Mass this morning, Catholic, who astonished me with his statement that Marx had things right. Marx certainly had insights which remain of value, but his economics in particular was completely screwy, which has a considerable bearing on why Marxist economies never worked. The theory is fatally flawed in its fundamentals. Most seriously, it regards land as a species of capital. But Land is sui generis. Both land and capital need to be carefully defined before attempting to analyse economic concepts and trying to form a coherent theory of economic relationships. Amongst the mischief done here is that it diverts attention away from the peculiarly privileged position of land owners in the economy through the mechanism of land monopoly. The second fatal flaw is Marx's Theory of Value. This says that value comes from labour, and that value is a kind of "congealed labo...
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