Karl Marx has been attracting fawning fascination lately, noted Bloomberg Businessweek's Peter Coy, "from the likes of New York University economist Nouriel Roubini and George Magnus, the London-based senior economic adviser to UBS Investment Bank." In fact, Bloomberg Businessweek published "Give Karl Marx a Chance to Save the World Economy" by George Magnus in late August.
"To put Marx's spirit back in the box," said Magnus, policy makers "have to sustain aggregate demand," through "fiscal incentives" like Obama's old and new stimulus plans. But Marx was no Keynesian. On the contrary, his essay on "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte," commenting on the December 1851 coup of Napoleon's nephew, was fiercely critical of what Marx called the "Napoleonic idea" of using government deficits to expand government jobs and public works schemes.
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