Understanding Marxism: Change the World

Workers of the world, join! Karl Marx’s popular call to action never caught on with its desired target, the working class. The intellectual class– the world of academia– swallowed it sinker, hook and line.

C. Bradley Thomspon is the author of “The Redneck Intellectual” on Substack, and America’s Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration that Defined It.

#marxism #prageru #history #karlmarx

SUBSCRIBE https://www.prageru.com/join/

Take PragerU videos with you all over you go. Download our totally free mobile app!
Download for Apple iOS ➡ https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/prage …
Download for Android ➡ https://play.google.com/store/apps/de …

Script:

Inscribed on Karl Marx’s tombstone in Highgate Cemetery in North London are the following words: “The theorists have just interpreted the world in numerous methods; the point, however, is to change it.”

Replace the word “teacher” for the word “theorist” (we truly do not have theorists anymore) and you get right to the core of Marx’s sustaining destination to the modern world.

Marx demands that the intellectual class– the teachers of law, sociology, history, ladies’s studies, sociology, journalism and so on– come out of the Ivory Tower and join the barricades; to see themselves not as the preservers of the dirty past, however the developers of a wonderful and new future.

The lure has shown to be very strong. And it’s not tough to comprehend why.

How much more significant, interesting, and romantic to see yourself as a representative of change instead of a simple academic. How much more meaningful, interesting, and romantic to see the young people who fill your classroom as potential soldiers in the cause.

Send them into the world with the very same advanced spirit, the same disgust towards bourgeois middle-class values that you feel, and you’ve done your job.

And we should offer these lecture-hall revolutionaries their due. Take a look around. For the a lot of part, they’ve prospered.

Drill into any existing leftist motion– environmentalism, crucial race theory, the massive growth of the well-being state, not to point out inclusion, equity and diversity offices at every university and major corporation– and you will find Marxism at its core: a contempt of the Enlightenment and the Judeo-Christian value system from which industrialism springs.

Marx’s most popular call to action– “employees of the world unite”– was not, obviously, to the professoriate, but to the laboring class.

That didn’t exercise so well.

Employees, specifically in the United States, turned out to be more thinking about fridges than revolutions. The only barricade they were passionate about was a white picket fence in front of a green suburban yard. Poor benighted souls, the appeal of Marxism was in some way lost on them– maybe since they didn’t go to college.

The intellectual class never lost faith– even after Stalin, even after Mao, even after Castro trashed Cuba, even after Pol Pot murdered millions of his fellow Cambodians, even after Hugo Chavez annihilated the greatest economy in South America, the scholastic elite stayed true followers.

In a world without faith– where God is dead– Marxism has actually become, in result, a substitute religion.

Among the significant strengths of Marxism (in contrast to both contemporary liberalism and conservatism) is the unyielding dedication of its followers to this faith, to attest to it, and to act upon it.

Marxism summons these fans to sign up with a crusade to damage the evil that is capitalism and to develop the excellent that is communism. In our nonreligious world, the Marxist ideal provides the Marxist true-believer a factor to live, a reason to pass away– and a reason to eliminate.

Monsters like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Kim Il Sung, Ho Chi Minh and Pol Pot took this to the nth degree and murdered millions. For the record, the latter 2 were politically “informed” in France. Pol Pot studied at the Sorbonne.

If you believe I’m overemphasizing the evils of Marxism, if you believe Stalin and those other guys got communism wrong but your new Democratic Socialism will get it right, reconsider.

Marxism leads a society towards a fixed objective: a utopian vision of pure freedom in which the person is freed from the “incorrect consciousness” of industrialism. By Marx’s own definition, the course to this utopia requires the damage– financially, politically, and ethically– of every vestige of civilization as we know it.

Economically, Marxism seeks to damage free enterprise, the division of labor, competition, product, and profit-and-loss wealth.

For the complete script, check out: https://www.prageru.com/video/understanding-marxism-change-the-world?playlist=understanding-marxism-series

source

Workers of the world, unite! Karl Marx’s well-known call to action never captured on with its intended target, the working class. The intellectual class– the world of academia– swallowed it line, sinker and hook. Poor benighted souls, the appeal of Marxism was in some way lost on them– maybe because they didn’t go to college.

Beasts like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Kim Il Sung, Ho Chi Minh and Pol Pot took this to the nth degree and murdered millions.