What Marx Still Offers to the Debate on Inequality

“We’re in the midst of crises and emerging crises. And so, recovering the actual Marx has a lot to speak to these issues.”

Jaime Edwards

Today, foundational thinkers like Karl Marx are reentering public conversation, especially as concerns over inequality and mobility sharpen. A recent panel hosted by the Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality and Mobility brought together scholars to revisit Marx’s legacy: its insights, blind spots, and ongoing relevance in an era of technological upheaval, labor displacement, and ideological division.

Featuring authors Brian Leiter and Jaime Edwards, alongside Professors Steven Durlauf and Geoffrey Wodtke, the event explored Marx’s critique of capitalism and its enduring implications for inequality. The discussion, which spanned themes from automation and labor to ideology and freedom, is available in full in our Video Gallery.

Rethinking Freedom and Work

Professor Brian Leiter emphasized that Marx placed a high value on freedom. “Humans are naturally productive,” Leiter explained, driven by the need to create and engage their capacities. This drive extends beyond basic necessity. It reflects a human impulse toward expression, purpose, and fulfillment. Yet under capitalism, “most people spend their time doing things in order to survive.” Leiter highlighted that wage labor leaves little room for choice or self-determination. “You’re not working because the work is meaningful or because it fulfills your nature. You’re working because you have to survive.”

Leiter described Marx’s vision of a society where individuals can freely engage in activities that reflect their own values and interests. “There are always going to be a few people who get to do what they want,” he said. “But Marx wants a society in which most people can do that.”

Technology & Labor Displacement

Leiter noted that capitalism strongly incentivizes technological development. “Capitalism is the best economic system in the history of the world for incentivizing the development of technology,” he said, “because it’s how capitalists get rich and richer.” This dynamic, however, produces consequences for labor. “Capitalism constantly pushes capitalists to reduce their costs, and the best way to reduce their costs is to replace labor with machines.”

As automation expands, the role of human labor continues to shrink. Leiter cited recent work by economists Grossman and Oberfield showing “a significant decline in the labor share after more than a century of stability.” With machines increasingly doing work once performed by people, many workers lose access to income. “If most people only have their labor power to sell, then they’re not needed anymore.”

Professor Jaime Edwards added that technological progress does not necessarily cause social harm. “That’s only a problem if that casts you into unemployment and poverty,” he explained. “It’s not a problem if we’re working cooperatively together, then it’s a blessing.” Edwards called attention to the possibility of reorganizing society to expand leisure and creative freedom rather than simply preserving wage labor.

Universal Basic Income & The Value of Work

The panel also examined Universal Basic Income (UBI) as a possible response to structural labor displacement. Professor Steven Durlauf expressed concerns about whether UBI could support a fulfilling life. “If you talk about people having meaningful lives or flourishing lives,” he said, “it’s inconsistent with that.” For Durlauf, meaning often comes from purposeful activity and social participation, not just financial support.

Leiter responded that UBI could be effective if it were large enough to support genuine freedom of choice. “If the UBI were astronomically greater than anything that’s proposed,” he said, “then it could make it possible for people to engage in the work they want to engage in because it’s meaningful to them.”

How Ideology Sustains Inequality

Edwards offered a detailed account of Marx’s view of ideology. He defined ideological belief as “a cluster of inferentially related beliefs and causally related attitudes” that function in three specific ways. They often involve “false central beliefs.” They are produced by “ideologists” who make “systematically underdetermined or contradicted claims.” And they “support the interests of a dominant class while undermining the interests of a dominated class.”

These beliefs help maintain unequal systems of power by disguising them as natural or inevitable. “It makes the contingent appear necessary. It makes the partial appear universal. It makes the unjust appear just,” Edwards said. He illustrated this with Marx’s critique of Malthus, who provided “a new apology for the exploiters of labor.”

Edwards further warned that ideology redirects concern away from systemic injustice. Rather than questioning the underlying structures of inequality, ideological narratives frame suffering as a matter of individual failure or cultural deficiency. This shift in perspective not only protects dominant interests but also weakens solidarity among the marginalized by fragmenting shared understanding. As Edwards concluded, “The critique of ideology is not just about pointing out that a belief is false. It’s about trying to break the grip of the beliefs that sustain the domination.”

Key Takeaways

• Freedom was central to Marx’s thinking. He believed people should be able to live and work in ways that reflect their own values and goals.
• Technological progress under capitalism often leads to labor being replaced by machines. This can cause widespread unemployment if the benefits are not shared fairly.
• Universal Basic Income has the potential to expand personal freedom, but only if it provides enough support to allow people to choose how they live, not just survive.
• Ideology keeps inequality in place by distorting how society sees itself and by turning public frustration against vulnerable groups instead of the systems in power.
• Critical analysis of these belief systems is necessary to challenge domination and imagine more just ways of organizing society.
  

To watch the full event and hear more from the panelists, visit our Video Gallery, also accessible by scrolling down the What’s New page.