Believe it or not: Karl Marx is making a comeback

[De Leonist]

23. Considering Marx lived in poverty most of his adult life.....

I highly doubt that. Rather his writings were brought about by the extreme poverty that was a reality for the overwhelming majority of people in Europe in his day. In fact many writers, socialist, anarchist or otherwise were just as passionate about bringing attention to and ending the severe poverty that the working class in his time lived in. Now one of the reasons why Socialism never set down roots here like it did in Europe is that for a lengthy period of time the American Working Class had opportunities that the European equivalent did not. Now while that was true to some extent because of our bill of rights. It was mostly because there was land that they could settle which placed them further away from the East which was at the mercy of markets on a level the west didn't see until later in the 19th century.

Now was Marx an ass ? Well one could certainly make that argument. More one than historical person who was obsessed with political and economic injustice had qualities that we might describe as being ass-like. Well ass-like in the sense that they were very curt, direct, and had little tolerance for what they saw as bullshit.

Like others have stated he certainly wasn't and isn't infallible.

As to more equal than others.... I think you fail to see how much that outlook simply reflects the logic of the time in which you were born.

Even now people of this era assume that we will always have people who have far more power, deservedly or not, than others and there is nothing we can do about that. I suppose that is true in the short term.

But in the long term, however you may wish to define it, nothing is set in stone.

This is one of the biggest weaknesses in those think capitalism is the best we can do. I'm sure plenty of people thought in the stone age that flint, chert, or obsidian tipped and bladed hunting tools were the best we would ever develop. They were of course wrong.

Now some maybe right in that Socialism will never overtake Capitalism. After all it's not as if it' inevitable. In fact if history is anything to go by chances are that what will end up relegating capitalism to the dust bin of dead Economic Systems is a technological breakthrough so game changing that it will quite literally alter what our society, and the relationships that make up our society, is based on down it's very core.

Though I'm sure some certainly are of the opinion that it is this technological breakthrough that will bring on a Socialism. Again this could be true as well. While modern intellectuals and analysts might be able to predict the short term with some level of accuracy the fact is the future is at best a cloudy haze in the distance.

Now I should state that will only be the case if our society does not experience a collapse. Again it's not as if it's inevitable that we will progress beyond the current material conditions in which we find ourselves. More than once have what are comparatively technologically advanced and complex societies collapsed in on themselves. This happens often because of resource depletion, environment devastation, or simply invasion by a much larger and more war-like group.

But all of this aside your claim that " He lived in his own fairyland utopia, that in reality never would work." I think shows an ignorance of Socialist Economic Models as a whole. Marx actually didn't talk as much about Socialism/Communism as you might think. He spent far more of his writing career criticizing what was considered orthodox economic theory in his day. In fact if you want a good study on 19th century capitalist economics as it was seen in Europe than Das Kapital is a good read.

Since Marx a host of different authors and theorists have emerged out of the Marxist Philosophical Tradition and many have espoused varying economic theories and models. Read some of them and I think you might change your tune.