We failed so far to accurately link work and market prices, capitalism is enabling that portion and is skewing things up. Marx did ask the question so, something most other economists never did. He also took a look at the social consequences for the working people, again something that is hardly done even today.
If you ignore the social aspects of capitalism and economics completely, sure, Marx doesn't look like an Einstein. If you include those, that changes, doesn't it?
EDIT (a long one): Recently I read "Faster, Cheaper, Better - A history of Manufacturing (pretty sure that's the right title, it's in a shelf at home right now) about the history of manufacturing from the stone age to LEAN and beyond, written by a former Toyota LEAN guy and current Professor at Karlsruhe University. Great book, can only recommend it. It is showing well researched examples for each period, including my personal favorite the Venetian Arsenal. And I totally agree with the author that we, as man kind, came out better every time we improved manufacturing. In the long run, in the short run we paid incredible high prices in health, lives and social issues. These short term consequences are just glanced over in this book, hand waved like "yadayadayada, child labor and harsh working conditions bad,... things improved, society better now".
Marx lived during the industrial revolution, he saw those problems first hand. He saw that people with capital got rich, exploiting poor people and driving whole societies and professions into the ground. The Luddites are sold as backwards thinking folks today. Back then, when you just lost your own, small workshop that provided food for your family too a manufacture, when your own, and your kids prospects, changed from stable income to ruined health, 12 hour work days and being treated as cattle, they seem to be quite reasonable so.
That Marx was the only prominent (there were certainly more, Marx being the most famous) economist looking at those issues says more about economists and politicians of the day than it says about Marx.
That those social aspects of our technological improvements are glanced over also tells a lot about us. We are in the middle of a second industrial revolution, one that is aggravated by climate change. We will have a ton of those social issues down the road. And we are not thinking about those enough. That we basically have to fall back to Marx to get some potential answers speaks volumes about modern economics, social sciences and engineering.
Marx also saw the potential of sustained economic growth way before anyone else did. He thought that socialism itself would only start making sense and become actionable after capitalism had exhausted its own growth potential; this is what would have made socialist revolution a foregone conclusion, a necessity of history - and an intermediate step towards full post-scarcity, which is what he meant by 'communism'. If he deserves to be called an economist (and I believe he does!) it's for these things. Not really for anything he wrote in Das Kapital.
I think most socialist that read theory know this, that is why they say socialism is more the road from capitalism to the never reachable utopia called communism.
At least that is how i have understand their explanation, das kapital is still on my reading list but it such a big book its kind of intimidating to start and given the limited amount of free time i have xD
If you ignore the social aspects of capitalism and economics completely, sure, Marx doesn't look like an Einstein. If you include those, that changes, doesn't it?
EDIT (a long one): Recently I read "Faster, Cheaper, Better - A history of Manufacturing (pretty sure that's the right title, it's in a shelf at home right now) about the history of manufacturing from the stone age to LEAN and beyond, written by a former Toyota LEAN guy and current Professor at Karlsruhe University. Great book, can only recommend it. It is showing well researched examples for each period, including my personal favorite the Venetian Arsenal. And I totally agree with the author that we, as man kind, came out better every time we improved manufacturing. In the long run, in the short run we paid incredible high prices in health, lives and social issues. These short term consequences are just glanced over in this book, hand waved like "yadayadayada, child labor and harsh working conditions bad,... things improved, society better now".
Marx lived during the industrial revolution, he saw those problems first hand. He saw that people with capital got rich, exploiting poor people and driving whole societies and professions into the ground. The Luddites are sold as backwards thinking folks today. Back then, when you just lost your own, small workshop that provided food for your family too a manufacture, when your own, and your kids prospects, changed from stable income to ruined health, 12 hour work days and being treated as cattle, they seem to be quite reasonable so.
That Marx was the only prominent (there were certainly more, Marx being the most famous) economist looking at those issues says more about economists and politicians of the day than it says about Marx.
That those social aspects of our technological improvements are glanced over also tells a lot about us. We are in the middle of a second industrial revolution, one that is aggravated by climate change. We will have a ton of those social issues down the road. And we are not thinking about those enough. That we basically have to fall back to Marx to get some potential answers speaks volumes about modern economics, social sciences and engineering.