Was Marx A Utopian Genius Or An Absolute Buffoon?

I am personally of the opinion that Marxism is impressively irrational. Others may disagree, but that’s fine. This topic is just for people to discuss their opinions on Marxism freely (keep profanity to a minimum and be civil with each other).

He was a utopian buffoon.

Maybe that's too harsh. I'd probably classify him as a good philosopher but a bad economist, which would match the reception he gets in each respective field. You can be a good philosopher and still wrong almost all the time.

But at least most people who follow the work of Socrates, Plato, Keynes, or Newton admit that the field has advanced past them. Occasionally you get someone like Marx with a cult of personality that insists all modern research that contradicts them is wrong.

I like that view. He was right to believe that there would be some sort of revolution against a ruling class that was, back in his time, much more emphasized and tyrannical than that of modern-day America. But he was a terrible economist, considering that his proposed economic system would have to result in the state having to generate prices at random, provide manufacturing quotas based on uninformed guesses, and also that he seemed to be completely ignorant of the fact that employers might actually be an important part of a functioning society.

Karl Marx never ran a lemonade stand, or he would have understood there's more to a producing business than bourgeois and proletariat [management and direct labor], and would have realized that his brand off economy does not know how to create personal wealth, but everything about spending other peoples' wealth until there is no more. He ignored a n enduring free market economy for one that collapses when other peoples' money is used up.

Christians who think the story of the young wealthy man who asked Jesus how to get to heaven think Christ's advice to him was for all off us: give all your money to the poor. No, that was advice for that young man, because he was jealous of his wealth. There are many wealth people who are charitable to help a person down on their luck, and wants to recover, but do not want to help when an able-bodied potential worker is too lazy for self-sufficiency. The wealthy should remain wealthy to help as many people as they can, while retaining wealth to continue that practice.  Christ was social, not a socialist.

Marxism won in almost every country, even in USA, which is why you have things Marx argued for, such as government healthcare, minimum wage, regulations of buisnesses, welfare...

Its great that you think how ideology which conquered almost entire known world is "irrational", but it is actually the world which is irrational for allowing itself to be conquered by such nonsense.

Ha! It’s not harsh enough. He was a bum.

He gave us socialism, Russia and China. Capitalism gave us Trump.

Sounds like capitalism wins.

When the concepts are irrational, you can manipulate them with valid logic all day and still produce incoherent non-sense.

Definitions need to be precise, if there are variations they must not be equivocated upon, there can be no circular references, properties must be derived not asserted.

All of the words Marx uses fail one or more of those tests. It's incomprehensible, and whether Marx was an arrogant nutjob who thought it made sense or whether that was an intentional manipulation to call critics stupid doesn't matter.

We have someone on this site who can provide a good analogy.

Marx is to economics and political philosophy as ebuc is to physics and cosmology.

Donald Trump is an avowed enemy of free trade. "We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs," Trump declared in his 2017 inaugural address. "Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength."
Most economists disagree with that assessment. As they will tell you, free (or even just freer) trade benefits all parties involved. Protectionism, by contrast, hurts consumers and businesses alike.
Unfortunately, Trump is not alone in his economic ignorance. Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) also dislikes free trade, denouncing it as "part of a global race to the bottom to boost the profits of large corporations."
Perhaps Trump and Sanders should each spend a little time studying Karl Marx. Yes, that Karl Marx. Although the fact is often forgotten today, Marx had a number of positive things to say about what we now call globalization. As the left-wing economist Meghnad Desai documented in his enlightening 2002 book Marx's Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism, Marx "was a champion of free trade, and no friend of tariff barriers." Indeed, Marx saw global capitalism as a revolutionary force that, in the words of The Communist Manifesto, "rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life." 

Marx wasn't even worth shooting at.

Also, Marx would have supported punishing the EU tariffs since he and Trump both agree there should be zero tariffs on both sides.