[Music] Dover the most dangerous man in Europe is about to arrive on Britain's Shores his preachings are so incendiary he's been forced out of his native country [Music] only liberal liberal Britain will tolerate his presence on her soil he heads to London to live in Exile [Music] 1849 [Music] but today that man's writings are still dangerous they're so radical so revolutionary they continue to divide the world it's been more than 150 years as he started writing about the world you know what if you're looking for an explanation of the global economic crisis he's a surprisingly good place to start [Music] with everything going so wrong you have to wonder is Karl Marx turning out to be right most people know Marx as the father of communism you might be surprised to hear that most of what he wrote was about capitalism [Music] and today his ideas about that are being taken seriously right at the heart of global business his analysis was pretty on the button and and explains a lot I think about some of the things that we see going on around in our economy today for Mark's the best argument against capitalism was that it was inherently unfair his ideas on inequality have more resonance than ever today [Music] is to install this sense of urgency things cannot go on forever the way they are in this series I'll tell you about the lives and revolutionary thinking of three extraordinary men John Maynard Keynes Friedrich Hayek and Karl Marx their worlds were changing as never before they saw that the fate of nations would hang on the power of money and they had radically different ideas about how to control it today the stakes could hardly be higher [Music] all three of these men were giants whose ideas live on but they speak to us right now because they more than anyone recognize the double-edged power of money how markets could transform all of our lives but also plunge us into chaos canes and Hayek argued about whether government should try to tame this force of human nature capitalism Karl Marx had the most radical advice of all get rid of it [Music] in 1989 Karl Marx's reputation lay in Ruins [Music] [Applause] what a mess [Applause] for most of us the fall of the Berlin Wall meant the end of Marx [Music] Millions rejected the horrors of a violent and repressive police state [Applause] [Music] [Applause] and because the communist countries claimed Marx as their inspiration his ideas were cast aside as well when this war came down I was just studying economics at University back then we knew what we thought we knew two things about Marxism communism one was it hand delivered freedom for the workers quite the opposite the other just as bad if you're an economist they hadn't delivered Prosperity the Communist approach to the economy just hadn't worked while the free market West took great strides the Communist planned economies had been left behind Marx's reputation as an economist was in shreds foreign something strange has happened it's like the global financial crisis has brought Karl Marx back from the dead and we still don't care what he said about communism but people are going back to his damning assessment of capitalism all its deep-seated flaws with a nagging doubt is it all now coming true when times were good Marx was nowhere but now the Western economies are in crisis he's attracting new interest right at the heart of the economic establishment from a former IMF Chief Economist Marx is right on a number of Dimensions he certainly is right that income inequality can be a source of tremendous tension he understood that there are situations in which capitalism and globalization can lead to economic crisis [Music] missed one of the world's leading Banks it's quite hard to convince people who live in Chelsea or Chelmsford that this is of great relevance to them but actually um it's worth a Bash anyone in Chelsea or Chelmsford who thinks Marx is only about communism is in for a shock it's what he said about capitalism that rings so true today [Music] Marx's key Insight was that capitalism was inherently unstable he said we'd lurched from crises to crisis and Society will become increasingly unequal Marx divided the world into bosses and workers for him they would always be at odds and that battle was a recipe for crises [Music] to make profit bosses squeeze what they pay workers the crisis comes when workers then don't have enough money to buy what bosses are trying to sell them now for decades after World War II that looked completely wrong we had years of stable growth and the workers were taking a larger and larger share of the pie but not anymore [Music] foreign that Ordinary People haven't got enough money to spend why haven't they got enough money to spend because it's been a big redistribution over the last few decades away from Ordinary People towards Capital towards wealth and for Marx there's no turning back he thought there were laws of motion running through human history capitalism would produce bigger and bigger crises and then it would collapse and he believed that the force driving us to this final collapse was the same one that built our world in the first place the power of money Marx had a very simple formulation about crises which is that they are manifestations of the fundamental flaws or contradictions as he called them of capitalism how would Marx have suggested solving the crisis is of course by abolishing capitalism is capitalism living on borrowed time foreign sometimes it doesn't feel that far-fetched [Music] here's why I've been thinking more about Marx it's because the last few years hasn't felt like an ordinary recession it hasn't felt like a crisis for one economy or for a group of economies in the west at times it really has felt like a crisis for the system for capitalism as we know it you want a bigger explanation and no one's ever had a bigger explanation for everything that's happened than Karl Marx [Music] capitalism's most implacable critic was born in the picture postcard town of Trier in what is now Southwest Germany today his birthplace makes its own contribution to the local economy it's a big draw for tourists thank you but do you still have a lot of people coming here tourists yeah all around the world we have more than 40 000 tourists here and 25 came from China it's a quarter of them come from come from China to see Marx's yeah birthplace and what do they buy what do they like delight red chocolate the caramel chocolate maybe I should get some of that as well actually and the wine Mark's father Heinrich Marx we had a wine yards nearby Atria and you don't think that car Marts would mind you selling all this stuff but capitalist having this shop did enjoy it because um he had a good humor too [Music] the man with the big theory about our world had big dreams right from the start when he was 17 Marx had to write an essay about picking the right career he said the best position in life was to serve all of mankind so your deed would live on perpetually at work and over your ashes would be shed the hot tears of noble people I wonder would that young man that rather Grand young man be surprised to hear that his first home had been turned into a museum but for all his Ambitions Marx was hardly a model student when he was at University in Berlin he earned a reputation as a radical thinker Marx comes across as a young man as this sort of energetic fiery hairy figure he was known as the wild boar or the Moor which sort of points to his sort of levantine complex he was full of ideas he was full of debate he liked big drinking sessions and then deep philosophical debate about the nature of Christ and German Romanticism and and politics [Music] he was 24 to Marx was a bit of a renaissance man he was an expert in law philosophy you name it in fact the only thing he didn't know much about was economics [Music] that all changed in 1842 arcs by now working as a journalist heard about a controversy in this wood that would help shape his understanding of how the world works [Music] peasants taking sticks a forest floor to use as firewood were being prosecuted for theft wood had been gathered here for centuries but now the landowners had declared it belonged to them [Music] what had been freely shared was now private property you could say that thinking about this question turned Marx into an economist but that wouldn't really capture it he came to think that economics the nature of economic relationships between people were at the heart of absolutely everything the foundations of Marx's thinking was was materialism that when you cut away religion ideology politics at its root were the material relations between man the need for food the need to have a roof over your head this is what ultimately drives so much of human interaction what wash unique in March she didn't see economy just as a special sphere he saw economy as the structuring principle of the entire social totality for Marx it all begins with private property which divides the world starkly there are those that have it and those that don't take this word before it became private property I could do what I like with it I could heat my house with it I could make a chair and exchange it for food but if it belongs to someone else the whole relationship changes now Marx would say I become a member of the proletariat now I have to work for the owner of the wood the capitalist for a wage then he can sell what I've made for more than he paid me look what's happened something that was part of my life is now a financial transaction the capitalists made profit he can use that to buy more wood build factories make more profit and so it goes on profit is now the heart of everything [Music] so there you have it the marxian view of capitalism or the gist of it anyway if you want more you'll have to Wade through hundreds of pages of marks for yourself the key point for us is that that driving force of capitalism the need to earn more and more profit well Mark thought that was also a recipe for constant crises [Music] so Marx would say you could trace the roots of the crisis we're in today right to the very heart of capitalism to its need to generate profit thank you [Music] what Mars was seeing in Trier was a world in flux feudalism was on the way out an entirely new way of doing things had arrived now we know what capitalism's really made of and the power of money today means a lot more than just throwing a few peasants in jail a bunch of guys in a trading floor can turn the entire economy upside down around the world all of our Lives depend on markets on capitalism being able to deliver if Marx is right if it's fundamentally flawed well that's a really big problem [Music] we might see a complex modern economy which all of us have a stake in but Marxist would say the same old rules still apply for them who owns what still means everything they see workers still slaving away and capitalists or bourgeoisie still exploiting them always striving to make more profit [Music] in Marx's World any capitalist that doesn't seek maximum profit is soon replaced by one who does so the system follows a completely predictable course he would say to its own destruction it's not an idea that many people accept he was completely wrong including the idea that capitalism was merely a phase and contained within the seeds of its own destruction that's not the case well everything is bound to collapse if you wait long enough I mean the Earth's going to you know sucked into the Sun Sunday you'd be forgiven for thinking the total collapse of capitalism sounds a little implausible [Music] profit be so disastrous when it's done such amazing things just look at how we eat under capitalism fresh fruit flown in from all over the world and choose from 700 types of breakfast cereal we have enough of it and it's all safe to eat this incredible plenty and the technology it depends on didn't come from the state it's what happens when you let capitalists compete for profit they didn't do it for our benefit they did it because it made them rich so at first glance Marx's idea that capitalism's search for profit would be its downfall sounds absurd profit May often sound venal it may often sound wrong but it is what pushes progress ahead profit is actually what drives the world forward and that's what Marx could never quite handle the prophet murder is essential I mean after all what is the profit motive it's just a way of of achieving a better Society by people wanting to better their own individual lot [Music] shaped and enriched our world it's no wonder Marx fell out of favor [Music] you shouldn't dismiss Dr marks quite yet it's true he talked a lot about class exploitation misery chaos but he didn't think capitalism was all bad far from it it's cocktail bar in London Soho hides a revolutionary past it used to be the Red Lion Pub site of a clandestine meeting of Communists in 1847 that would echo down the ages [Music] it was at that meeting that they commissioned car marks and his sidekick Friedrich Engels to write one of the most incendiary pamphlets of all time the Communist Manifesto [Music] some of this you probably know the famous opening line A specter is haunting Europe and of course the end about the workers having nothing to lose but their chains they have a world to win working men of all countries unite in capital letters but what you probably don't know what I find most interesting is what's in the middle one of the most perceptive and admiring bits of writing about capitalism I've ever read fact it reads A Lot truer now than when it was written I think what's surprising if a lot of Marx's rating is that you find in amongst the communism a lot of good analysis of capitalism and actually also find within it um quite a lot of praise for capitalism capitalism is basically ambiguous he's at the same time he was honest Ultra fascinated he was fully aware that this is the most productive dynamic system in the history of humanity and so on the truth is Mark did understand that the drive for profit would achieve incredible things he's been the first to show what man's activity can bring about it's accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian Pyramids Roman aqueducts and Gothic Cathedrals it has conducted Expeditions that put in the shade all former exoduses of Nations and Crusades he did really get the kind of global aspect he got the idea that people were suddenly be able to get things from all the way around the world in a completely new way and the impact of that the need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe it was nestled everywhere settle everywhere establish connections everywhere it creates a world after its own image but you know there's got to be a downside for the bourgeoisie modern Bourgeois Society is like the sorcerer who's no longer able to control the powers of the Netherworld whom he has called up by his spells what the bourgeoisie therefore produces above all is its own grave diggers it's full and the Victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable it's stirring stuff but it does raise a bit of a puzzle pack of marks think the capitalists the bourgeoisie are so brilliant and yet so doomed well for him it all came down to the way they treat their staff to understand Marx's analysis of crises we have to first understand the capitalism that he knew 19th century capitalists might have built wonders surpassing Egyptian pyramids but they also forced their workers to endure terrible conditions and pay [Music] the Industrial Revolution and all the incredible achievements that followed were made possible by coal miners this is a replica of what it will like it Victorian era underground the man you can see at Far Side he had a pick and shovel and he'd worked the call fill that cough and then his wife had to drag that call behind it to a loading point which will put me up to 35 meters away oh yeah we're all families they need they needed little boy or little girl to work this door as well I said but if you took the job you had to sort of provide small child yeah so the only light out between them were a candle which the duck kept so he could see what he didn't call for so the little boy or girl was sat on their own in the deck for 12 hours a day it is difficult to overstate the horror of industrialization in Europe in 1829 Liverpool for example a life expectancy at Birth was about 28 years and that was the lowest age since the Black Death so the impact of the Industrial Revolution on life chances was absolutely terrifying [Music] by 1849 his revolutionary writings had got Mark's banned from everywhere but Britain here he could observe the power money had to ruin lives at a suitably safe distance of course I think in the last few minutes I've come closer to what it was actually like the drudgery of Victorian times than Karl Marx ever did he never went to a mine and as far as we can tell he only went to a factory once towards the end of his life but didn't stop him writing vividly about the horrors of Britain's dark satanic Mills foreign the horrors of Victorian working conditions clearly shaped Marx's economics time minimum pay for Pros for bosses bosses who did digimore usually went bust he thought there'd always be downward pressure on wages and that wages would come down to the minimum that enabled bear survival they couldn't go lower than that otherwise the workers would die but he thought they'd be depressed down to that minimum the reality of course has been the opposite it has been a continual advancement in wages year in year out decade in decade out foreign was wrong he thought it would all get so bad the workers would overthrow the system yet even as he was writing reformers were beginning to get rid of the worst Employment Practices [Music] capitalism got Kinder not nastier but the idea that the competing interests of bosses and workers would cause crises well that does seem relevant today [Music] very sophisticated argument so I'm going to need children's toys to explain it but let me say right at the start none of these toys endorse any kind of violent revolution now here's a mine owner capitalist miners with or without hat now imagine that there aren't very many miners around then the mine owner has to compete with the other capitalists for workers probably ends up having to pay them more than you'd like to trouble is those high costs cut into profits now if that's happening across the economy you've got a declining rate of profit and a lot of capitalists going out of business you get a crisis you get countless workers losing their jobs having a terrible time until finally wages fall far enough the capitalists can go back to exploiting them again so high labor costs are bad for business [Music] but what makes the collapse of capitalism inevitable for Marx is that the bosses are in trouble even when they have things their own way now imagine the opposite situation you've got loads of workers all of this lot competing for a single job then well they wonder he's smiling the capitalists only has to pay the workers bare minimum or Reserve Army of the unemployments as long as that's full this lot can keep paying very low wages and keep making profits except in the end the problem it's badly paid workers don't spend very much and not very much spending in an economy is not good for business you get another crisis more capitalists going bust and this crisis is going to be harder to fix see why Marx thought the capitalists were in trouble no matter what they do they never want to pay the workers more money they always need to make more profit but in seeking out profit they end up eroding the basis on which it's made they're forgotten if you like where their money ultimately comes from the punch line as ever with marks capitalism so that's how problems with wages can cause crises at least in theory but how is any of that relevant to right now a Marxist would say that little Parable with the toy men tells you everything you need to know about the financial crisis we've just seen in fact they'd say you could explain the last 40 Years of world history entirely in terms of capitalism's desperate need to have the advantages of a ready supply of cheap labor but none of the costs and you don't have to take my word for it foreign let's take a look at the last 40 Years of History through the prism of Marx's theories to show how they might explain the mess we're in an imaginary Marxist Broadcasting Corporation would see it all as a good old 1970s style class struggle as usual the world's divided between workers and capitalists always fighting to get a bigger slice of the pie and the crisis happened Marxist would argue because the capitalists have been coming out on top a bit too often the fight is over wages capitalists want to pay less the workers want to get more the 70s powerful trade unions battled to keep wages High then we come to the 80s fight back time for capitalists Marx would have seen Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan as acting purely in the interests of the capitalist bosses it was their governments that helped business by getting rid of the obstacles that made it hard to cut wages the violence and intimidation we have seen should never have happened it is the work of extremists it is the Enemy Within the if they do not report for work within 48 hours they forfeited their jobs and terminated so for the Marxist Broadcasting Corporation the capitalists won in the 1980s and they kept on winning the guaranteed High wages and job security that workers had enjoyed until the 70s had gone and downward pressure on wages started to lay the seeds of the crisis we see today well it's great Telly is it actually true well we know the Marx's view of histories right about one thing at least in Britain and America earnings at the very top have soared in the last few years and everyone else has been squeezed in Britain rear learnings have been flat or falling for the best part of 10 years since before the crisis and in America that's been happening since the 70s [Music] in the United States a full-time male worker median income has stagnated for a third of a century no increase household income today is the same as it was 15 years ago all the increase to the income has gone to the top the share of income in the United States that was going to the top one percent of the households 20 years ago was around 12 percent today that chair is closer to 23 percent [Music] so the greedy capitalists been picking the pockets of the workers [Music] so why do I think all that money has been flowing to the top well I don't think it's a big conspiracy but there have been social and political changes that have made a difference we used to have really big unions we used to have very high tax rates on rich people and we had social norms just wasn't done for the people running a bank to take a huge chunk of the profits for themselves those things help keep a lid on inequality we don't have them anymore but really crucial to all of this it's been the changing structure of our economy [Applause] new technology [Music] work previously done by hand is now done by machines [Music] fewer workers needed there are more competing for every job meaning bosses can pay them less significant factor is globalization with falling barriers to trade around the world global business has gained access to a giant new pool of Cheaper labor brought into the market now millions and millions of new workers in China in India in other parts of Asia in parts of South America Brazil for instance so that process has transformed the capital labor ratio on global scale for example an analyst can as well be sitting in the Philippines or in Mumbai uh to do the job that is done at a much higher price in New York many workers in the rich countries are now competing with an industrial Reserve Army running into the billions I think in emerging market economies there'll be an overwhelming vote in favor of what has happened because almost everyone is better off than they were and would have been but that's less evident in the industrialized world where many lower paid people have become even lower paid relative to those who prospered and that is a concern [Music] for years after World War II we could be pretty sure Marx was wrong where you had capitalism it was working pretty well you could talk about a rising tide lifting all boats but you look at the global economy today I think you see a capitalism that Marx would recognize it's lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty in China but for most Ordinary People in the west the system's not working at all for them capitalism's not coming through on its side of the deal it's an analysis that Rings true even for the leader of the world's biggest economy [Applause] before the recession jobs and Manufacturing began leaving our Shores technology made businesses more efficient but also made some jobs obsolete Folks at the top saw their incomes rise like never before but most hard-working Americans struggled with costs that were growing paychecks that weren't and personal debt that kept piling up thank you [Music] Marx would say this squeeze on wages was the root cause of the huge economic crisis that we've been living through but you might see a problem with the Marxist explanation it was all down to low wages you'd expect the crisis to have started where people spend their pay out in the real economy one way or another that is how most of the recession since the war have got started but this time it wasn't the High Street that sank the city it was the other way around the explosion that rocked the global economy in 2008 was designated deep inside the banks so how would marks link low wages to troubled Banks the answer is he saw Capital as endlessly adaptable it could solve one problem low wages but only at the cost of creating another Mars didn't underestimate capitalism he thought it was fundamentally flawed stupid in large parts of the population weren't being paid enough to support demand well he wouldn't have been at all surprised to hear the capitalists had come up with a brilliant solution the credit card [Music] with consumer credit people can carry on spending even if they haven't got the money the economy stays afloat and the capitalists still make their profit [Music] I did an answer to all of capitalism's woes but only for a while remember Marx thought the system was fundamentally flawed they might be very clever these capitalists but now more than ever they were living on borrowed time baby your ship is coming as we know it went well Beyond credit cards what ultimately brought the crisis to a head was the billions borrowed on mortgages people thought the value of their house would keep going up forever housing credit is beautiful because if your house price is increasing and you're borrowing against the increase in value of your house you don't feel you're boring away into death you are in America it happened on a massive massive there as as the capitalists were getting richer and richer they couldn't spend all of their extra money driven as ever by the desire to make more profit they lent it out in riskier and riskier ways the name given to this lending might well be familiar subprime what we did is as the incomes of most Americans were stagnating or or even declining we said don't let it bother you keep spending as if your income was going up and they did that very well I mean who would oppose it the banks were making money uh the households who are getting their their house the politicians who have happy constituents I mean there is no nobody who's going to be unhappy in this process until it collapses and we all know it seems obvious lending to people who couldn't afford it wasn't a lasting solution to anything it led to a housing bubble which burst threatening some of the world's biggest banks and thanks to our integrated world what started in the United States spread and infected the entire system causing a global recession so here's the Marxist explanation for the crisis we've just seen you've got a global economy with businesses getting better and better at squeezing wages and pushing up profits but there's a problem they're producing a lot of stuff that the workers can no longer afford and a lot of profits looking for a new home a global property bubble provided an answer to both those problems the system was kept afloat on a mountain of debt but it was only a matter of time before it all came crashing down capitalism's only ever as strong as its latest temporary fix [Music] people would say it's completely wrong Marxism doesn't actually work but it keeps coming back because it makes it makes for a good story I don't think low wages paid any role at all in causing the crisis the crisis was caused by governments and central banks flooding the market with cheap credits and cheap money because politicians don't like downturn in an economy that throws people out of work I think it may have to some degree increased their level of indebtedness that people went into the crisis with which I think intensified How Deep The Crisis became but it wasn't the underlying cause it was a contextual factor which made it a bit worse idea that low wages may have contributed to the crisis is gaining ground even if the name Marx is as toxic as ever [Music] George Magnus is a senior economic advisor to one of the world's leading Banks you've been writing quite a lot about Mark since this crisis started how did you come to look at him again actually it was on this trading floor it was probably the weekend before Lehman's went bust and it's normally a little bit noisy but at the time it was you could hear a pin drop it was that deathly quiet and I could almost feel you know that the global system was frozen and it was quite a scary thought it took me back to a lot of the things that I used to read about and study when I was much younger the days when I actually read marks for fun and you wrote about that and what was the reaction I did get a lot of hate mail I have to say there are a lot of people who were quite opposed to the idea that anything that was socialistic or Marxist you know could be at all considered serious in the mainstream a lot of this hate mail I have to say came from the United States and I was accused of being you know an Obama clone and President Obama the well-known very mysterious forces so there was a lot of negative reaction from I think people that probably predictably um you know had already tied their own ideological colors to the mast but the people who do find Value in marks aren't necessarily going to follow him all the way I think Marx helps in framing the problem but I think the solutions have to be different given the different environment we are in except Marx would insist trap his inescapable capitalists must seek profit above all else or they'll go out of business so why would they ever choose to give workers a bigger share of the pie what Marx would say is that we have to look for ways out of this crisis which look beyond the restoration of capitalist class power and I think this is a time when we actually need to start thinking about the Revolutionary solution again [Music] but who exactly is revolting against who Marx divided the world neatly into workers and capitalists but today his Stark distinction is incredibly blurred bosses work for themselves and workers own shares [Music] in our modern world enough of us do have a stake in the system where the mobile phones or pension plans to Stave off talk of armed revolts but what about the people capitalism's failing what does Marx have to say to them [Music] it's really amazing how well Mark seems to understand our world where we're more interconnected than he could ever have imagined where all the faces of capitalism good and bad are now on display in pretty much every corner of the globe but he was the one who famously said it wasn't enough to interpret the world the point was to change it if you ask him what exactly was supposed to replace capitalism with well he had remarkably little to say about that as Marx entered his final years he seemed quite content with the way things were [Music] he'd been poor for a lot of his life but by 1856 he had enough money to move to London suburbs the young Firebrand now looked like part of the establishment spend his day walking around Hampstead Heath he would worry about personal finances he would worry about his his daughters and the expense of their piano lessons I mean he he lived a a remarkably Bourgeois life in in many ways in his later years March was the world of Harry to make it happen young hot-headed socialists from around the world would come to North London to pay their respects win his support Mr M seemed happy to watch and wait good Marx only really had contempt for terrorists those who were seeking to fast forward political progress by having changed through through arbitrary violence you needed the economic fundamentals in place for a proper Revolution to succeed Revolution we need to understand the last time I promise a bit more Marxist theory [Music] as usual he had a grand analysis of the history of the world he saw the great sweep of Humanity's Endeavors from the caveman to the slave societies of Greece and Rome to the feudalism of kings and castles all of which was replaced in turn by our own capitalist system of bosses and workers incredibly unfair but also incredibly productive Mark said only when we've got everything we could out of capitalism could we afford to have a revolution in his words the Nell of capitalist private property sounds procreators are expropriated all to be replaced by more or less nothing irritated me because next to no alternative laid out March basically was not the one who simply gave us a blueprint you know five stages after capitalism communism here you have the basic guidelines what to do and so on no no it's up to us he just opened up the field is there an alternative to capitalism I have no idea well I suppose it could be all kinds of also dead silence starvation um or or the end of the world or anything I simply have no idea if there is an alternative it doesn't it doesn't occur to me it doesn't seem to me to be an important it's like saying is there an alternative to weather [Music] well I said we couldn't describe what the next stage of human development would look like any more than a feudal surf could have described our lives today to which you might say fair enough except you might also think it was pretty telling after all nobody else has been able to describe a convincing alternative to capitalism either I think he would have written a lot more had he lived 10 years more on what a socialist republic would look like and who knows but that might have saved the world a lot of bother without his blueprint we all know what happened next [Music] there weren't any Revolutions in the rich developed countries as Marx predicted instead it happened in one of the world's poorest Nations [Music] Soviet Russia may have left Marx far behind but it was an attempt to try something else and many have drawn lessons from its failure the truth is at the moment there are different forms of capitalism but on the big argument about whether you really want to have a communist system or a capitalist one that is pretty much one everywhere I think there are more Humane versions of capitalism or more barbaric forms of capitalism um but I don't think there's a systemic alternative to capitalism will there ever be yes I would think so I mean you know nothing is forever absolutely nothing and uh capitalism is not forever but anyone looking for a fairer alternative knows they can't ever repeat what happened east of the Berlin Wall tatership political oppression and millions of ruined lives [Music] 55 till 1989 this was the main remand Center for political prisoners in communist East Germany today it's been turned into a memorial [Music] ideology whoever we arrest he or she is guilty it's possible that places seldom talk seriously about replacing it [Music] you can shibit all these protests in Europe Greece and so on I was in Spain in Greece asking always the same question okay what do you want apart from some purely moralistic answers I didn't get any good concrete proposals you know answers like oh a money should serve people not people serving money my God Hitler and everyone would have agreed with this I'm sure he would have thought that with this implosion of the banking system at the heart of the capitalism in the United States with the United Kingdom and so on there would be a huge uh rush to Marxism and extreme socialism that hasn't really happened uh it is quite surprising and I'm very pleased but if memories of this place do Fade could there ever be an alternative to capitalism or should what happened here be a less than a fact of life and they're saying that for instance human nature can be altered fundamentally they're revealing themselves as a utopian and the problem with Utopia is that it can only ever be approached across a sea of blood and you never arrive this is my big Mantra when we left this aracus of utopians maybe but the only real Utopia is to think that with some cosmetic changes things can go on indefinitely the way they are now foreign died in 1883. in a speech at his grave his longtime friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels declared his name and work will endure Through the Ages [Music] for most of the 20th century his name did endure though usually for all the wrong reasons [Music] tree dead Prussian really say to us [Music] fundamentally I think Marx reminds us that if capitalism doesn't work for everyone it might not work at all when you look at what's happening the pressure on wages can you understand why people are sort of looking again at some of Marx's analysis yes the big picture the workers versus the capitalists and there's no doubt that there have been significant changes in inequality and in the distribution of income which make you pause about the benefits of the development of output and prosperity that we've seen I don't think you can afford to believe that the benefits of a market economy and bringing Prosperity will be there unless there is a collective commitment to keep the system going and that does require people to believe that everyone will benefit in the end I think some of the the ugliness of capitalism that he saw in the 19th century seems to be a pre-appearing in the 20th in 21st and in a way we have to keep our our our perspective on this health conditions are much better living standards are are starting from a higher level but it is still the case that uh things aren't the way they ought to be and they're not moving in the way they should be but let's face it Marx wasn't just talking about tweaking the system he had a much grander claim than that did Marx change the world of course he did and after that funeral people did weep hot tears at his grave just as his 17 year old self would have wanted probably many more live to curse his name but there's no getting around it capitalism's still here Marx was right to see capitalism as inherently unstable and often unfair Keynes and Hayek saw that too but Marx was the first and unlike them he didn't think we should find a way to live with it he said capitalism would bounce back from crises and reinvent itself but in the end a compelling alternative would appear and capitalism would collapse for all that Rings true now in Marx on that he seems to have been dead wrong maybe he did underestimate capitalism he certainly overestimated the opposition to it I think the system needs to reinvent itself now again if it can pull that off we'll be talking even less about Marx a century from now but the last few years have left capitalism with plenty to prove the open university has produced six one-minute animations to explain some of the key economic ideas that affect all of us so if you want to learn how to spot an invisible hand or other secrets of Economics go to bbc.co.uk masters of money and follow the link to the open University next this evening here on BBC HD stay with us it's never mind the buzz Cox thank you