{"id":12140,"date":"2018-05-05T07:19:32","date_gmt":"2018-05-05T11:19:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=12140"},"modified":"2026-02-18T09:54:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T14:54:14","slug":"usa-today-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2018\/05\/05\/usa-today-3\/","title":{"rendered":"USA TODAY: Don’t Celebrate Marx’s Birthday, Communism Killed Millions"},"content":{"rendered":"
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USA TODAY, May 5, 2018<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n
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USA Today<\/h1>\n

Don’t celebrate Karl Marx. His Communism has a death count in the millions.<\/a><\/h1>\n<\/section>\n
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James Bovard, Opinion columnist<\/span> Published 6:00 a.m. ET May 5, 2018 <\/span><\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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It’s Karl Marx’s 200th birthday, but there’s nothing to celebrate. His dream of a utopia lead to millions of deaths at the hands of tyrants.<\/em><\/p>\n

Saturday marks 200 years since the birth of Karl Marx, and tributes are arising out around the globe.\u00a0In a\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0tribute\u00a0headlined, \u201cHappy Birthday, Karl Marx. You Were Right!<\/a>\u201d philosophy professor Jason Barker declared that \u201ceducated liberal opinion is today more or less unanimous in its agreement (with)\u00a0Marx\u2019s basic thesis\u201d on the flaws of capitalism.\u00a0But this is true only if \u201ceducated liberal opinion\u201d simply does not care about tyranny.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

But Marxism in practice didn\u2019t work out so well. Communist regimes produced the greatest ideological carnage in human history, killing more than a hundred million people<\/a>\u00a0in the last century. While some apologists claim it is unfair to Marx to blame him, the seeds of tyranny were there from the start.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Marx\u2019s salvation scheme was built on a mystical foundation supplied by German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel.\u00a0Though The\u00a0New York Times’<\/em>\u00a0eulogy for Marx\u00a0touted Hegel as an advocate of a \u201crational liberal state,\u201d\u00a0Hegel was derided in his lifetime as the \u201croyal Prussian court philosopher<\/a>\u201d and for promoting the notion that the State is\u00a0inherently rational<\/a>.\u00a0Hegel deified government, asserting that \u201cthe\u00a0State is the Divine Idea<\/a> as it exists on earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marx, perhaps blinded by Hegel, never recognized the inherent danger of Leviathan.\u00a0 Nor did Marx explain how communism would actually arise after the demolition of capitalism.\u00a0 Equally important, he never even attempted to reveal how the\u00a0State would \u201cwither away<\/a>\u201d\u00a0after the \u201cdictatorship of the proletariat\u201d commenced.\u00a0Marx\u2019s humanitarian piffle did nothing to deter Lenin from decreeing that \u201cliberty is so precious that it must be rationed<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marxists assumed that vastly increasing government power was the key to liberating humanity. Glorifying command-and-control was the flipside of demonizing prices and profits. But all-powerful regimes quickly became ends in themselves. In 1932, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin decreed\u00a0the death penalty for any theft of state property<\/a>. As millions of Ukrainians were starving due to the brutal collectivization of farms,\u00a0even children poaching a few ears of corn<\/a> could be shot.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Marx continues to appeal to social justice warriors thanks to axioms such as \u201cfrom each according to his ability, to each according to his need<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0And who determines \u201cneed\u201d?\u00a0 The presumably omniscient, benevolent State. Marxism promised to end the \u201cclass struggle\u201d but did so by\u00a0subjugating almost everyone to officialdom<\/a>. Abolishing private property left people hostage to petty government officials who punished anyone who failed to kowtow to the latest dictates.<\/strong><\/div>\n

Marxist regimes felt entitled to inflict unlimited delusions on their victims \u2014\u00a0for the good of the people, or at least proletariats.\u00a0East Germans were told the\u00a0Berlin Wall<\/a> existed to keep fascists out \u2014\u00a0even though all the killings by border guards involved East Germans heading West.\u00a0Marxism promised a utopia<\/a>, and that unsecured pledge sufficed to treat subjects like serfs bound to endlessly submit and obey.\u00a0Anyone who tried to escape was treated as if they were stealing government property.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Communism is still often portrayed as morally superior to capitalism because it banishes greedy corporations poisoning people for profit. But\u00a0East Bloc regimes became a vast graveyard for Mother Nature<\/a>.\u00a0Pollution was pervasive<\/a>\u00a0largely due to the deification of economic plans. As long as the factories roared and steel output rose, it didn\u2019t matter if people and everything else were perishing.<\/p>\n

I traveled behind the Iron Curtain<\/a> many times in the mid-late 1980s to\u00a0study first-hand the results of Marx\u2019s philosophy.\u00a0I saw\u00a0pervasive fear in the faces of emaciated people on the streets of Bucharest<\/a>, Romania,\u00a0and I saw the terror in the eyes of young Czechs when anyone touched on the subject of politics. I\u00a0experienced border guards who flew into a tizzy\u00a0at any piece of paper that might contain subversive ideas. And I\u00a0witnessed legions of western apologists<\/a>\u00a0who always insisted on giving communist regimes more time and more western handouts to redeem themselves.<\/p>\n

Marx never intended for his doctrines to spur perpetual dread in hundreds of millions of victims. But it was criminally naive to expect happy results from any system that bestowed boundless power on rulers.\u00a0On Marx\u2019s birthday, never forget that a philosophy that begins by idealizing government will end by idealizing subjugation<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

James Bovard,\u00a0author of\u00a0<\/em>Attention Deficit Democracy<\/a>,\u00a0is\u00a0a member of\u00a0USA TODAY\u2019s\u00a0Board of Contributors. Follow him on Twitter:\u00a0@JimBovard<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 USA TODAY, May 5, 2018 USA Today Don’t celebrate Karl Marx. His Communism has a death count in the millions. James Bovard, Opinion columnist Published 6:00 a.m. ET May 5, 2018 It’s Karl Marx’s 200th birthday, but there’s nothing to celebrate. His dream of a utopia lead to millions of deaths at the hands […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1476,1475,221,233,1477],"class_list":["post-12140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-carnage","tag-karl-marx","tag-philosophy","tag-soviet-union","tag-waiver-of-liability"],"yoast_head":"\nUSA TODAY: Don't Celebrate Marx's Birthday, Communism Killed Millions - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2018\/05\/05\/usa-today-3\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"USA TODAY: Don't Celebrate Marx's Birthday, Communism Killed Millions - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u00a0 USA TODAY, May 5, 2018 USA Today Don’t celebrate Karl Marx. 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