Groundbreaking economist and philosopher Karl Heinrich Marx is born in Trier, Germany. Marx is best known for co-writing The Communist Manifesto, an historic 1848 pamphlet that criticized capitalism and called for a “forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.”
Marx’s theories about politics, society, and economics became known as Marxism, a doctrine focused on the idea that human history is defined by class conflict. Despite the polarizing nature of his work, Karl Marx is widely considered to be one of the most influential thinkers in modern history.
Don't celebrate Karl Marx. His Communism has a death count in the millions. His dream of a utopia led to millions of deaths at the hands of tyrants.
On The 200th anniversary of his unfortunate birth, the New York Times tribute headlined, “Happy Birthday, Karl Marx. You Were Right!” philosophy professor Jason Barker declared that “educated liberal opinion is today more or less unanimous in its agreement (with) Marx’s basic thesis” on the flaws of capitalism. But this is true only if “educated liberal opinion” simply does not care about tyranny.
But Marxism in practice didn’t work out so well. Communist regimes produced the greatest ideological carnage in human history, killing more than a hundred million people in the last century. While some apologists claim it is unfair to Marx to blame him, the seeds of tyranny were there from the start.
Marx’s salvation scheme was built on a mystical foundation supplied by German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel. Though The New York Times' eulogy for Marx touted Hegel as an advocate of a “rational liberal state,” Hegel was derided in his lifetime as the “royal Prussian court philosopher” and for promoting the notion that the State is inherently rational. Hegel deified government, asserting that “the State is the Divine Idea as it exists on earth.”
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Marx, perhaps blinded by Hegel, never recognized the inherent danger of Leviathan. Nor did Marx explain how communism would actually arise after the demolition of capitalism. Equally important, he never even attempted to reveal how the State would “wither away” after the “dictatorship of the proletariat” commenced. Marx’s humanitarian piffle did nothing to deter Lenin from decreeing that “liberty is so precious that it must be rationed.”
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