'Marxists and Conservatives Have More in Common than Either Side Would Like to Admit'

Chris Dillow on common ground between Marxists and Conservatives:

Fairness, decentralization & capitalism: Marxists and Conservatives have more in common than either side would like to admit. This thought occurred to me whilst reading a superb piece by Andrew Lilico.

He describes the Brams-Taylor procedure for cutting a cake in a fair way - in the sense of ensuring envy-freeness - and says that this shows that a central agency such as the state is unnecessary to achieve fairness:...

The appropriate mechanism here is one in which there is a balance of power, such that no individual can say: "take it or leave it."

This is where Marxism enters. Marxists claim that, under capitalism, the appropriate mechanism is absent. Marx stressed that ... the labour market is an arena in which power is unbalanced...

Nor do Marxists expect the state to correct this, because the state is captured by capitalists - it is "a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie."...

Instead, Marx thought that fairness can only be achieved by abolishing both capitalism and the state - something which is only feasible at a high level of economic development - and replacing it with some forms of decentralized decision-making. ...

In this sense, Marxists agree with Andrew: people can find fair allocations themselves without a central agency. ...