Is reading Marx and other economic or social authors like him

>is reading [...] worth the time
nah books are shit

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>>9512471
Marx's work has garnered responses from most of the world's greatest minds. You're doing a disservice to yourself if you neglect to read what he wrote

>>9512471
marx is one of the few political/economic authors you should read if only because of the criticisms it levels at modernity, which go deeper than materialism. everything else to do with politics is a complete waste of time

>>9512471
At this point, yes. Had a billion people not felt the need to legitimize his retarded ideology, then no. I still can't fathom why people listened to that economic illiterate.

>>9512471
Yes, absolutely. Read Marx, Engels, Lenin and maybe Trotsky.

If you're looking into how economics and such works then no, Marx is unempirical "it just makes sense" tier garbage as is Communism as a whole before Deng Xiaoping.

If you're looking at criticisms of the "capitalist system" then go right ahead, he's good for that. Mostly for a look into 19th century views about capitalism as Marx only knows what's common knowledge and what "just makes sense", he doesn't have any special insight into the workings of the system.

It's really not. He doesn't know economics for shit, and what he has said would happen has not happened.

>>9514100
>Marx only knows what's common knowledge and what "just makes sense", he doesn't have any special insight into the workings of the system.

Stop posting anytime.

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>>9512600
>not reading machiavelli
>not reading thucydides
>not reading Hobbes, Rosseau et al
embarrassing.

>>9514116
This. What a terrible post that was.

>>9512471
Economic history major here, I'd say it's worth it, but you have to complement it with philosophy and sociology, because a lot of researchers come from a pure economics background and therefore make moronic assumptions/claims.

The only American author I'd recommend is Veblen, and the only one I'm interested in is Alfred Chandler. I'm gonna read The History of Capitalism by Jürgen Kocka this summer, looking forward to it. My professor almost came from recommending it to the seminar.

I'm thinking of making a social sciences or economic history chart. Until then, I recommen:

Veblen - The Instinct of Workmanship
Veblen - Theory of the Leisure Class
Weber - The Protestant Ethic (read it as an hypothesis rather than an investigation)
Aspers & Dodd - Re-Imagining Economic Sociology
Braudel - Civilization and Capitalism (This is great for getting away from the anglo-american way of writing history)
Some book on the history of economic thought. Here you need to actively avoid American authors, because they give too much priority to classical liberalism and free trade. These are of course important topics, but they're far from the only things you need to know.

If you're only going to read one of the things from this list, read Braudel. Three volumes at about 550 pages each make for a lot of reading, but he writes really well (some people dislike his spamming details, but you should realise that they are there for a reason. Braudel doesn't present history, he tells it).

Also, AMA

>>9514390
Does marxism work?

Capital is a massive time investment. Ive yet to meet someone whose read even one volume.

I think a summary or one volume condensation of his thought would be sufficient for most.

>>9514396
Depends on what you mean by "marxism". I'd say a lot of Marx' stuff is like The Protestant Ethic, crap research but interesting to test in other research.

Political Marxism needs a lot of reworking to work. You can't read Marx like the Gospel and apply directly. And abolishing private property will probably never work. But Marxism gave rise to European Social Democracy, which I'd say works as long as you make sure that the conservative value system is never too threatened.