ldsuttonjr Loc: ShangriLa

The Left’s Chilling Refusal to Stop Flirting With Marxist Ideas
Jarrett Stepman
May 5 is Karl Marx’s 200th birthday. Despite a legacy of failure, some proponents say his ideas were correct. (Photo: Harald Tittel/dpa/picture-alliance/Newscom)
The New York Times just can’t stop talking about communism.

Recently the Times ran an editorial headlined “Happy Birthday, Karl Marx. You Were Right!”

The piece, written by Jason Barker, a professor in South Korea, is about what one would expect from a defense of communism. As one Federalist writer noted, it was “beyond parody.”

Hilariously, the article was behind a very capitalistic paywall.


The New York Times hasn’t shied away from publishing Marxist boosterism.

In 2017, the Times dedicated an entire section of its website to the 100-year anniversary of the communist revolution in Russia. It featured an assortment of absurd pieces running the gamut of declaring Lenin a hero environmentalist to claiming that women had better sex lives under socialism.

This romanticized account of life under communism is a delusion.

Of course, while the most ridiculous claim in the most recent piece is that Marx has somehow proven to be correct, it’s notable it goes a step further to say that essentially nobody questions his fundamental critiques of capitalism.

“While most are in agreement about Marx’s diagnosis of capitalism, opinion on how to treat its ‘disorder’ is thoroughly divided,” Barker wrote.

It seems fair to conclude that actually there is widespread doubt about Marx’s claims about capitalism—unless, of course, one lives in a neatly sealed left-wing bubble.

The fact is, Marx was wrong about everything.

He was wrong about economics, wrong about the flow of history, wrong about religion, wrong about where his ideas would lead, and most importantly, wrong about human nature—which he believed could be reshaped under a communist regime.

If there was one thing that was illuminating about Barker’s piece, it was his description of modern social justice crusades as fundamentally Marxist.

“Social justice movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo owe something of an unspoken debt to Marx through their unapologetic targeting of the ‘eternal truths’ of our age,” Barker wrote. “Such movements recognize, as did Marx, that the ideas that rule every society are those of its ruling class and that overturning those ideas is fundamental to true revolutionary progress.”

This is an interesting admission that these movements are essentially “cultural Marxism,” a phrase that the left so often stridently claims is a figment of conservative imaginations.

Given the profound failures of and misery created by communism in the past, we probably shouldn’t be too hopeful about the success of its modern iterations.

Unfortunately, many young people don’t know about the depths of these past failures, or have a skewed idea of what communism means in practice.

We should all worry about the consequences of historical ignorance.

At least Marx could conceivably say that “real communism hasn’t been tried yet.”

His modern proponents don’t have an excuse.

After nearly two centuries of experimentation with Marxist ideas, communism has failed to produce a brotherhood of man or a classless society in which everyone worked in blissful harmony.

Instead, it has produced societies notorious for their cruelty, dysfunction, and violence. It has led to the estimated death toll of just under 100 million people in the last century.

One only has to look at the Korean Peninsula to see the astounding difference of a society under communist tyranny and freedom.


As historian Sean McMeekin wrote in his book, “The Russian Revolution”:

Today’s Western socialists, dreaming of a world where private property and inequality are outlawed, where rational economic development is planned by far-seeing intellectuals, should be careful what they wish for … they may just get it.

Communism offers nothing to humanity but suffering and hopelessness.

This is not to say that life under communism was all about starvation and murderous purges.

Even at its least malignant, living under communism’s inevitable system of enforced conformity and equality where decisions are only the purview of government authorities and bureaucratic managers is hardly a system of human flourishing.

This is more akin to living a lifetime stuck in the DMV.

Marx was wrong, hopelessly wrong. His ideas have been tried, tested, and spectacularly failed.

It’s time to leave his legacy on the ash heap of history.

Radiance3

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The left has lost directions for the millennials, poisoned their minds, and along with those from Kinder to K12. The LEFTIST LEADERS now follow the Saul Alinsky Style, the Rules for Radicals. These leftist leaders therefore become like Kim Jung UN of NK, or Fidel Castro of Cuba, or those socialist countries of the Central and South American countries. But these millennials are so stupid for allowing them to brainwash their minds. Few years from now, they will suffer, just like all those living on those countries where darkness and hopelessness engulf them every day.
Where will they escape? Perhaps to the closest edge of the earth, where only Penquins live.

Is there any country in the world were people are happy and successful under Marxism, Communism, Socialism, Totalitarianism? Reasons why tens of millions of people are coming to the US illegally from all over the globe, so as to escape from those sufferings and cruelties they face daily.

Compared to where they are now, United States is heaven. But why are the leftists and democrats destroying our country,and be like them?

Steve700

How the hell does a professor from South Korea of all places, have the stupidity to write such nonsense? These demented mental midgets from opposite lands are truly beyond belief or understanding.

old marine Loc: America home of the brave

They must have. Visited the Demon-Rats in the swamp and stayed there too long smelling the swamp air or had too much swamp water kool-aid to drinl

God bless America and President Trump

Big dog

Demorats, pinkocrats. They should have taken the red pill .

Kevyn

Very few on the American left support communism, to suggest otherwise is a lie, instead they support consumer protection, investing in infrastructure repair, an end to corporate welfare, a single payer health care system, graduated tax system and universal civil rights. Further we support a foreign and trade policy favoring nations that respect human rights the rights of labor and sound environmental policy.

ldsuttonjr Loc: ShangriLa

That is communism you inept communist!

Kevyn

Communism is when the state and its people collectively own the means of all production. The debate in this country is not capitalism against communism. The debate is between lazi fare capitalism favored by the right and regulated capitalism favored by the left. The former results in monopolies, a lack of labor rights, dangerous workplaces, price fixing, production of dangerous and toxic products and all manner of ills with no recourse but the market. Your lack of understanding of political philosophy, history, international relations and economics leads one to believe you must struggle to relieve yourself without getting your feet wet.

ldsuttonjr Loc: ShangriLa

kevie: We have laws that control all you're puke you mention above....the problem is the democrat communist in America refuse to follow and piss on "Rule of Law!" Case in point immigration! Water boarding the demorat party would bring a lot of this fraud out from the rug!

Steve700

Communism with bloody is revolution is what happens when the left is able to make a complete takeover. More and more regulation and control that harms business, until finally, if they get enough power, making a complete takeover is what the left does. (At which point the conservatives, the Christians and the capitalists are exterminated and you can't deny it 'cuz it happens every time) And if they're exporting a lot, you can call it state capitalism, like China, but to say that the people own it, (along with the governments) is bull shit. They have no power, influence or benefits from the productivity other than what the government chooses to give them which will be always at pretty much of it poverty level. It is no longer even so much left versus right these days as it is globalist versus patriot. Trump is a patriot and all those who are against him, including the embedded corrupt right (which aren't quite as bad as the globalist left) are all globalists.

Radiance3

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These are the people that make up the left and the democrats. Marxists, Communists, Socialists, Totalitarian, Dictatorship, ANTIFA, BLM, Muslim terrorists, Muslim refugees, Mexican drug dealers and drug addicts, rapists, free loaders, democrat abortionists women, LGBT's, PP abortionists and baby parts dealers, illegal aliens from Mexico. They are all the people of democrats, illegal aliens from socialist South and Central American countries. ALL OF THEM ARE FREE LOADERS. And DACA.
From all over the world, they come to the US to free load, to kill, and to invade.

Steve700

Now you're sounding like Donald Trump. If you don't specify that it is some of them, you will get in trouble for being a hate filled racist liar.

And you forgot to include that crazy, morally bankrupt degenerates

Radiance3

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The left consume but most of them don't produce. They are called FREE LOADERS.

old marine Loc: America home of the brave

Did you have to post that picture of the Demon-Rats poster child?

Now i may not be able to sleep tonight after seeing that swamp child.

God bless America and President Trump
Please hurry and drain the swamp.

woodguru

The right embraces Nazi ideals