Very interesting. Of course, industrialism, which was the somewhat immediate result of Baconian ethics and Cartesian epistemology, was something that I think Locke saw coming, and which Marx was at liberty to interpret. In a way, industrialism was a phenomenon which both Locke and Marx remarked upon, but neither could be said to have created. Now, the interesting thing about Descartes in particular is that, in retrospect, you see how both sides of this conflict come out of his ideas - particularly in the Discourse on the Method, where elements of both individual freedom and top down tyranny take root in the modern mind. In that way, the "synthesis" of Descartes can be said to lead to a fresh thesis and antithesis in Locke and Marx.
Actually, we are on the verge of a new synthesis, but it isn't the synthesis the powerful have been hoping for. Marx's end goal was for the means of creating value to be in the hands of the individual, whereas the emphasis of Locke was that the means of production have to be built and fostered, and cannot be subject to the egalitarian impulse. But we are approaching a reality where the lockean ideal is giving rise to a situation whereby the individual will own the means of production through radical prosperity. POW Crypto currency, microinvesting, microlending, the ability to publish proffesional level media, 3d printing, among many other things, all point to this. As India and China and Africa join the first world, we will see an era of such overwhelming plenty and technological advancement that the individual will have means of producing value that tycoons of the past never could have dreamed of for themselves.
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I probably should have emphasized that I was talking about the "ideology of capitalism." Das Kapital is quite clearly the source of this ideology. The ideology of capitalism is based on the Marxian concept of ideology.
I agree with you that there are thousands of wonderful things, like cryptocurrency, that could positively affect the future.
But before the positive things to happen one has to prepare to defend the future from stupid ideas of the past.
This entrenched left/right split is a stupid idea. Both sides of the split end up in totalitarian systems.
Hatred of "liberalism" is a stupid idea because people have given the term contradictory meanings.
I agree that Marx had some potent observations about economics. However, the overall goal of his work was to create a revolution.
There are great things about cryptocurrencies. The problem the crypto market faces is that are powerful entities in the world that are skilled at debasing currencies.
There are many ways to debase currencies. Pump and dump schemes can destroy trust in the currency. The wild swings in crypto prices this last week show that crypto still has a stability problem.
One can very well find smart contracts leading people astray. The people who study the blockchain might find weaknesses and ways to manipulate the smart contracts.
Anyway, what I've been trying to do with my culture war posts is to create arguments that can break people out of their culture war mindset.
So, I think the observation that the ideology of Conservatism was created by the Tories and that the ideology of Capitalism was created by Marx might help people sunk in the culture war mindset to wake up and realize that the philosophical challenges we face are deeper than this absurd left/right split.
What Marx really did was help describe the industrial age which arose within the Lockean societies. The ideology that is now called capitalism preceded and gave birth to industrial capitalism. So, in a sense, that's right, because the post Lockean industrial era is not something that is fully addressed by the ideologies that preceded it, and no one was really there who had the wherewithal to mount a defense against Marx's criticisms of it until well after Marx described it. But Marx's description of capitalism falls far short of the modern ideology that goes by that name, because most capitalists don't accept Marx's theory of value or his materialist, anti-rationalist premises. I would also argue that Marx's goal was not a top down economy. He saw a top down economy as a means to an end: empowering the common man with control over the means of production. His end goal I think is inevitably going to come about, which is something he predicted. However, the way in which it is presently coming about is entirely different from what he predicted; rather it is coming about through Lockean means. The reason for his error is precisely that his characterisation of the industrial era was completely wrong due to incorrect premises.
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