Notes on How I Became an Erratic Marxist

Yanis Varoufakis outlines his personal story of his interest in Marxism.

He cites two failures of Marx - an error of omission and an error of commission.

The error of comission was Marx’s development of mathematical equations to express his theory. Yanis speculates that he was seduced by the power of mathematical proof.

Peirce provides a counter-example. He criticized Hegel, and perhaps this aspect of Marx as well, as embracing a metaphysics of necessity, of denying freedom. Yet he also developed sophisticated mathematics, in part intended to help express these aspects of his theory.