New study/experiment. Uber conservatives now get a diagnosis?

[DanaC]

@ Orthodoc

If I say on this quite politically minded board that I am a Marxist, there will be an assumption that I am referring to Marx's revolutionary programme of change, in which he both favoured, and predicted as inevitable, a workers' revolution which would create a 'dictatorship of the proletariat' as a temporary stage en route from capitalism to classless society.

If I were to say the same thing to a politically minded person from Britain, France, or Germany, they would most likely assume I was referring to 'modern marxism', a school of thought which underpins European socialist theory and, to an extent, practice.

If, however, I said I was a Communist, they may assume that I lean towards, or directly support classical Marxism, or (even more likely) orthodox Marxism.

The world now is, in many ways, a very different place to the one Marx, and the many other Communists of the 18th Century, inhabited. Revolution was in the air. It was talked of, written about and plotted for in towns and cities across the continent. The gulf that had become so apparent between the employer class and the working class, continued to widen and discontent was gathering pace.

Marx was a very clever man, but he lived in the time that he lived and however much he may have thought he could predict the future, he had no Crystal ball either.

But his analysis of how capitalism functioned and related to the social conditions of the day had merit. The same analysis can be applied to the modern world, but it won't paint an 18th century picture.