For a while now I have taken issue with the broken patent & IP system we currently have where a few oligarchs strip ever more of our rights in order to maintain government mandated monopolies. The systems' stated intent is to promote invention and development by preventing the richest largest corporations from exploiting independent inventors and the populace. In reality it does the exact opposite and the solution would be true free market economics.
What does this have to do with Karl Marx? I was looking into the type of corrupted economic system, it is most similar to socialism, or what monarchies did with royal companies (yet surprisingly it is not covered under the accepted definitions of any of the economic models they used). A modern name often used for it is "Crony capitalism" but that is a horribly misleading name since it is the antithesis of capitalism. It was during that research that I found an interesting little tidbit by Karl Marx.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_monopoly_capitalism
The theory of state monopoly capitalism was initially a Marxist doctrine popularised after World War II. Lenin had claimed in 1916 that World War I had transformed laissez-faire capitalism into monopoly capitalism, but he did not publish any extensive theory about the topic. The term refers to an environment where the state intervenes in the economy to protect large monopolistic or oligopolistic businesses from competition by smaller firms.
This is exactly the same as the so called "crony capitalism", yet originally observed by Marx. What is amazing is his conclusion. In a true capitalistic society Cronyism wouldn't fly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism
Capitalism is generally considered by scholars to be an economic system that includes private ownership of the means of production, creation of goods or services for profit or income, the accumulation of capital, competitive markets, voluntary exchange, and wage labor.
The issues are that "competitive markets" and "voluntary exchange" are suppressed in both the "State monopoly capitalism (aka Crony Capitalism)", which is the stated problem according to Marx, as well as in "socialism/communism", the supposed solution according to Marx.
Marx believed the solution to the encroachment of government on private liberty is to change the government from being run by "greedy rich oligarchs" to "paragons of the people" and then give the government even more power. This obviously goes very wrong very quickly when you replace democracy for self proclaimed paragons of the people.
Ironically marx's solution is even worse then the problem it was meant to fix. [sarcasm]Who would have thought that the problem of monopolies fusing with government to get government mandated monopolies would get worse if you decree that all business must be government owned.[/sarcasm]
The problem is NOT Capitalism, the problem is the LACK of capitalism.