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OPINIONS
04.08.2019
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WHY IS MARXISM STILL COOL? STEPHEN JONES CONTRIBUTOR
Of all the ideologies that plague academia, the worst may be Marxism. The founder of Marxism is philosopher Karl Marx, author of “The Communist Manifesto.” Being that Marxism and its
offspring communism have inspired brainwashing, gulags, mass murders, destruction of private property, famine and conformity, why is this ideology so appealing to academia? Marxism can be summed up in this Marx quote: “History calls those the greatest who have ennobled themselves by working for the common good; experience acclaims as happiest the man who has made the greatest number of people happy.”
PHOTO COURTESY STEPHEN JONES
Marx’s foundation rests on the idea of focusing one’s life on the “common good”. According to Marx, this in-practice would lead to the overall happiness of society. The concept of the common good is
flawed. “Good” cannot be collectively held the same way as food cannot be collectively digested. It can only be self-held and self-obtained. Collectives do not exist in the sense that others can think or achieve for you. Only on an individual level can that be done. The collective’s good only goes as far as the individuals who make it up. Much like good, happiness is only attained by pursuing your life, not the lives of others. With both Marxism and communism, you most forgo your own liberty to pursue both the happiness of the state and the dictates of others. Conformity will follow shortly after, along with terminating those who do not abide by this code. This ideology expresses itself, as I understand it, as essentially, “You do not have the right to exist for your own sake, but only for the sake of others.” The idea of sacrificing yourself to the “common good” inevitably means that the “good” of others takes precedent over your own good.
Force and seizure are the execution, no pun intended, of this ideology, yet Marxist intellectuals usually evade his violent rhetoric. In an interview with The Chicago Tribune from 1879, Marx expressed, “No great movement has ever been inaugurated without bloodshed.”
Jonathan Haidt, social science is the field to have the most Marxists.
Marx isn’t the only one idolized. His ideological children get praise too. Senator Bernie Sanders, NFL player Colin Kaepernick and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have commended Fidel Castro, the dictator of Cuba. The musician Jay-Z fawns over Che Guevara, who served as Castro’s chief executioner. Mao Zedong, history’s undefeated mass murderer, has followers that still quote his “Little Red Book.” Political theorist Vladimir Lenin is immortalized as a statue in Seattle, Washington. Russians still bow at the grave of Joseph Stalin, the former dictator of the Soviet Union. According to the American Enterprise Institute as well as studies by psychologist
I asked James Lindsay, a mathematician who co-wrote academic hoax papers that exposed the lunacy of Marxist-based studies, for his opinion on why Marxism is so appealing. He wrote to me, “Students tend to be genuinely naïve, and professors tend to believe it’s possible to educate themselves and everyone out of human nature, which they see as base, silly and unlikely to exist.”
On the surface, Marxism is filled with good intentions. Undoubtedly, this is one of the biggest reasons to why it appeals to many. But read between the lines, and you’ll see that good intentions alone don’t give ideas rationale.
Marxism is the antithesis of individual liberty—something which George Mason helped theorize. People should not be at the disposal of others and the state that they form. They should be left to pursue their individual selfinterests, and not forced to be servants.
WHY MARXISM IS ACTUALLY COOL XANDER CAVERLY CONTRIBUTOR
Because socialism is a philosophy, not a government. Socialism is a response to what Karl Marx called the inherent contradictions of capitalism. Those contradictions are happening before our very eyes: prisons engage in slave labor to help companies cut a profit under the premise of increasing production efficiency. Working class Americans
suffer under inhumane conditions working multiple jobs to support their families, while CEOs benefit from their necessary toils. Students suffer under thousands in debt just to get a job that may not ever pay that debt off. Patients receive excellent healthcare that permanently cripples their family after they are forced to pay thousands for price-gouged pharmaceuticals. Corporations obsess over making money off the fossil fuel industry at the literal expense of the entire planet. Marx’s proposal in devising his brand of socialism, while complex, ultimately boils down to one simple principle: the only way to ensure our own best interests as individuals is to serve our interests as a community. Marx expresses this in a quote from “The Communist Manifesto,” in which he states, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Socialism is not exclusive to naive college students and sheltered philosophy professors. Albert Einstein wrote on the benefits of a socialist society. Martin Luther King Jr. supported a working class movement
under his own brand of socialism. Even George Orwell, one of history’s greatest critics of Soviet communism, was himself a socialist. Marxism and socialism are not synonymous with communism, or even with each other. Leftist politics is a massive spectrum that contains myriad diverse ideologies and ideas that all have different pros and cons. But for the young American leftist, one thing is certain: capitalism only damages our society and our world.
PHOTO COURTESY UNI HAMBURG
PHOTO COURTESY NARA
In this age of the Fight for $15, #MeToo movement and general dissatisfaction with the status quo, many young people are beginning to turn to leftist ideologies like Marxism, socialism and social democracy. In fact, favorability for socialism is on the rise in a major way. So why are these theories, which are commonly attributed to authoritarian regimes such as Stalin’s Soviet Russia, so popular in the ultracapitalist United States?