Some of the most terrifying words I have ever heard were uttered by a woman on a recent daily radio talk show: “I like Karl Marx,” she declared, adding emphatically, “He had some very good ideas.”
It was not her declaration that she liked Marx that inspired fear—even in this post–Soviet era. Similar sentiments are encountered on a daily basis in the faculty lounges of our leading universities.
The troubling thing was that it was obvious from the very outset that she had not the slightest acquaintanceship with Marx’s theories of scientific socialism. She had plainly never so much as scanned the brief encapsulation of his thoughts in the Communist Manifesto, much less studied the three hefty volumes of his seminal work Capital (Das Kapital).
Yet despite her utter lack of knowledge of Marx’s character, she was not in the least embarrassed to proclaim she “liked” him or, while having not the faintest notion of what his “good ideas” might be, to declare—with seemingly unshakable assurance—her admiration for them.
Her approval of Marx and his thinking seemed to be based on the assumption that Marx blandly believed every one should be “equal” and that “spreading the wealth around” was the way to achieve it. Yet Marx’s writings were not concerned with 21st century notions of “equality” and “sharing wealth” but with demonstrating to the world the scientific inevitability of socialism.
The poor benighted soul’s accolades were enough to have the old brute spinning in his cold atheist grave in London’s Highgate Cemetery. And serve him right, too! Marx’s ideas have inflicted untold human suffering wherever they have been applied—whether in Russia and its unfortunate satellites, China, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia or the Balkans. And the blame for it lies largely with complacent ill–informed utopians like the talk show lady. GPH✠
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