Karl Marx was born in Germany to affluent parents. He proceeded to spend his life squandering his privilege, fathering illegitimate children, cheating on his wife, and creating the philosophy of Marxism that would go on to kill more than a 100 million people.
Marx had an unrelenting belief that inequality was a result of the bourgeoisie taking advantage of the proletariat. In his view, the best way to eliminate this inequality was to have the government seize the means of production and redistribute the wealth to the rest of society. These teachings would be encapsulated in his most famous work “The Communist Manifesto”
In the 20th century, Communism would tarnish its reputation itself. Governments that seized wealth from its citizens, reneged on the promise of redistribution. Communist countries like Russia, China, and Vietnam would end up killing millions of its citizens due to starvation and many negative results that communism brought.
The legacy of communism is beginning to hold a more positive connotation over time. 44 % of millennials would prefer to live in a socialist country. This may be due in large part of how frequent Marx is subscribed as reading for college students.
Marx theories are based on the unsubstantiated assumption that in order for the lower and middle class to accumulate more wealth, it must be taken from the upper class. Furthermore, that the upper class are exploiting the middle and lower class. The ones he placed the most responsible for this inequality were the wealthy that employed the proletariat.
In the “Communist Manifesto,” Marx wrote: “The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers.”
In a functioning society that requires many roles, people render their services for a wage. In a free market society, people do not merely earn a wage but they make a living, and are free to pursue how and what means will provide them that living.
What Marx was right about, was that improved technology would eliminate certain professions. While this is true, creative destruction has created jobs as well. It has made our standard of living increase, and allowed for the division of labor and for people to specialize in a certain capacity.
Whereas Marxism was an economic theory, it inspired the Frankfurt school to invent “Cultural Marxism” combining race, religion, and gender. Similar to Marxism, cultural Marxism holds that an imbalance among one group is due to another groups oppression. Social justice movements to include Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, and Women’s March are built on the foundation of Cultural Marxism.
What cultural Marxism is getting wrong is that there is an underlying assumption that racism, or discrimination is the sole reason for one group not being on par with the other. While this may be part of the problem, what it fails to realize is the responsibility of the individual. Furthermore, that each individual within a group is automatically subjected to the same problems within the group.
As we are seeing with capitalism in the 21st century, it has allowed for many innovative breakthroughs, and more opportunities for people. We are also seeing that is when government is not taxing companies and individuals at a high rate, that unemployment is lowering, and that people are able to keep more of the money that they have earned. The government doesn’t need to redistribute the wealth, they just have to let us keep our own.
I fear that Karl Marx isn’t going away anytime soon, we should be studying his teachings and understanding them. However, we also should recognize the failings of communism and the pain and suffering it brings. More people are starting to favor communism and seeing it as a viable solution to solving inequality. The best that we can do is solve their ignorance, and show how capitalism can best solve these inequalities.
Neener Neener Karl Baby
What else can one say when they are sooooo wrong
To truly understand Marx, one has to understand Thomas Malthus, who wrote his major work, an essay on population growth, in 1789. What Malthus wrote was that populations always grow faster than food supplies, and as such 90% of the world population would always live in a state of slow starvation, but one bad harvest from death.
Marx looked at the world through Malthusian eyes, and decided that the answer was simply to share better.
Had Marx looked at the writings of Adam Smith, he would have seen that the problems Malthus wrote about had already been solved, and that a world of relative plenty was not only possible, but was becoming a reality. Sadly, Marx blamed the cure for the disease, and made it his life’s mission to throw the world back into continuous poverty.
“Know thy enemy.” We should study Marxism, and especially all of it’s failures and shortcomings. This is a great primer and reminder, lest we sleep and allow another romanticized version of Marxism to rear it’s face, only to result in it’s inevitable deadly and destructive conclusion.