German political philosopher Karl Marx created the system known as Marxism, together with his collaborator Friedrich Engels. In their view, later known as historical materialism, the history of society is a history of class struggle in which the ruling class uses religion and other traditions and institutions, as well as its economic power, to reinforce its domination over the working classes. Human culture, according to Marx, is dependent on economic (material) conditions and serves economic ends.

 

Religion, for Marx, is “the opiate of the masses” that serves the political end of suppressing mass revolution. Marxism is a theory of revolution, of history, of economics, and of politics, and it served as the ideology for Communism. Although he was a philosopher Marx had disdain for merely theoretical intellectual work, stating, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways; the point is to change it.”

 

Marx was in many respects the most influential political theorist of the 19th century. Marx advocated the abolition of private property and predicted the demise of capitalism after a series of recurring crises.

 

Llitsverse.com enumerates ten reasons Marxism or communism is not good. From them, we chose five (5) to be featured here:

 

1. In Marxism, You Have No Rights and No Room For Creativity

The absence of citizens’ rights is at the heart of Marxism and Communism. “In keeping with the last entry, Marx advocated ten rules in his Communist Manifesto for the forced redistribution of all land and property for the good of the national community. This is theft, from the citizens’ point of view. They are forced to join the new Communist government—whether they like it or not. This, of course, must be done with a “might is right” frame of mind: lots of men with guns show up and take everything you have “for the glory of the motherland,” as the Soviets might have said.”

 

In Marxism, the average person is not particularly good at anything. The perfect job for such a person is on the assembly line. “But regardless of the governments under which we live, we all have different aspirations. Some people are perfectly happy sweeping floors, but most of us—justly—want more out of life. Not only money, but fame, glory, and a sense of accomplishment. All of these require at least some creative thought. You may want to be a poet or a painter, but these jobs certainly don’t pay the bills—and Communism views them as unnecessary and ridiculous. All that matters is building a super-powerful nation—and one of the first obstacles that must be removed is what Jefferson called “the pursuit of happiness.”





2. There is Reduced Incentives to Work Hard

Necessary in giving people the energy they need to work hard in a difficult job are incentives, such as higher pay for doctors—are.“When there are no extra incentives available—such as in a Communist state, where all reap an equal share in what some have worked harder to sow—the people in difficult jobs quickly lose their motivation. For example, workers would stop caring about how thoroughly they inspect the cars on the assembly lines, since it makes no difference to them either way. They are also likely to grow bitter at the government for failing to give them recognition when they do a good job. Revolts become a distinct liability; many a Communist state has fallen because of this problem of reduced incentives.”

 

3. There is Indifference Towards the Environment

“A Communist state will make up for its inefficient economy by doing whatever is necessary to produce crops and water. In the 1960s, the Soviet Communist regime diverted two important rivers for irrigation. The Aral Sea, which those rivers fed, has now shrunk to as little as ten percent of its original size. It used to be the fourth largest lake in the world. The lesson: rather than letting the efficiency of capitalism into its economic model, the Soviet government chose to extract everything it could from the environment—without caring one bit about the health of that environment.”

 

4. There are Mass Murders

“Communist rule may be directly blamed for the deaths of at least eighty-five million people in the twentieth century. Stalin alone murdered about twenty million, although other estimates range from fifty-three million to eighty million. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia, and set out to establish a Communist utopia. They immediately committed genocide on their own people. At least two million were executed by brutally primitive methods in keeping with the Khmer Rouge’s anti-technology stance; many of the victims were murdered merely for wearing glasses. Intelligence was deemed a direct and serious threat to the Khmer Rouge.

And let’s not forget Chairman Mao. He may not have been as evil as Stalin, but he was the very definition of indifference towards humanity. His “Great Leap Forward” caused the deaths by starvation of forty-five million Chinese civilians.

 

5. Karl Marx Was Wrong to Begin With

“Marx’s doctrine is fraught with faulty logic, loopholes, and unsolved problems. His idea of economics is based on the labor theory of value, which asserts that a car, for example, should cost more than a TV, because more labor is needed to produce it. But this is an oversimplification of the market.Sam’s Choice Cola tastes almost identical to Coca-Cola, but costs half as much. The labor is the same, but people are happy to pay twice as much for the only difference: the brand name. The same holds true with medicine.

In the same way, tennis shoes can cost over $200 in the US, despite being made in China or Taiwan for only about $3–10. Why do they cost so much? Because the industries that own them sell them based on how highly they are in demand by the public. That’s why they have athletes endorse their products: to make them more desirable to the athletes’ fans. This is expressly why Marxist Communism has caused the utter collapse of so many national economies: it thinks in broad strokes, and fails to tell one subtlety from another. This, first and foremost, is because Communism is not grounded in reality” ... continue reading

 

Tag: Marxism and Communism: The Real Score