Many of the snarkier, radicalized neo-Marxists that emerged in the recession’s wake are furious at “capitalism” for the fact that they owe $100,000 in student loans yet can’t find jobs, when they should be furious at themselves for digging a $100K debt to bankster gangsters all for the dubious privilege of tacking up useless sociology degrees to their studio-apartment walls.
For some reason, despite all of Marxism’s historical failings, these dupes still consider Ol’ Karl “relevant”—more relevant than ever, if you can swallow that without choking. But Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto back when employers depended on manual labor—in other words, back when hammers and sickles were actually useful devices.
But technology has rendered Marx supremely irrelevant, because it has rendered the value of human labor irrelevant.
