Every generation has its foolish adherents to Marxism, ignorant of or unable to learn from history. It is, sadly, a seductive idea to the weak of mind and those incapable of critical thinking.
6 thoughts on “The Worst Idea In The World”
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Note that Marxism caught on in countries where free-market economics never took off. Eastern Europe. Tinhorn segments of Latin America and Africa. Crumbling 20th-century China. Isolated Korea. Quagmirish Colonial Indochina. People who don’t have past experience with free markets often don’t trust that they can exist, or that they are ultimately more profitable than systems of forcible redistribution. Such people do have past experience of theft-based economics, and Marxism promised to take from the bad guys, so they went for it – until they discovered that Marxism would take from everyone.
A system based on looting naturally attracts looters to join its ranks, hence the Versailles lifestyles of the party elite. The commissars start looking a lot like the czars .
And certain Western utopian idiots think Marxism can eventually work.
To me this sounds a lot like the ‘no true Scotsman’ fallacy. Countries with market economies had Marxist revolutions. Cuba would be one of those countries. I also used to hear Marxism could only take root in nations run by despots yet they won an election in Chile. To me Marxism was appealing to several nations for different reasons. In some cases it was seen that the people in that country had lost control over their own economy and their own destiny as everything was owned by foreigners or some sort of entrenched elite. i.e. people had the perception that they had no upwards social mobility no matter what they did. This happened in Cuba. In other cases it was simply that the current system did not deliver universal services like universal potable water or electricity. This was something of a propaganda banner in the Soviet Union and a lot of Marxist regimes in Africa.
Oh hell, we’ll get free stuff! Poverty is just a result of rich people sticking it to poor people.
And speaking of Versailles mentality, I enjoyed the runway show and caviar at the global warming summit. Some people, as you know Alan, are more equal than others.
The problem in a nutshell…
the ability of socialist writers “to impress the thoughtless” is remarkably undiminished…
We’d better figure out how to get to the root of this and kill it. Obama has put to rest the idea that it can’t happen here. I really, really want to be wrong about how ineffective the fight against this will be but ‘undiminished’ is the understatement of the millennium.
Start with marxist ‘thought’ being childish thought. Why can’t the adults crush this every time it appears? It’s been proved wrong again and again, but without impact. How do we weaponize truth to become an effective weapon?
Logic doesn’t convince those who want to steal other people’s stuff. Marxism may have been a disaster for the majority, but it still allowed the minority free rein to steal and enslave whatever and whoever they liked.
And most aspiring Marxists expect to be the Commisars, not in the Gulags.
“Logic doesn’t convince those who want to steal other people’s stuff. ”
Korrekt.
“Marxism may have been a disaster for the majority, but it still allowed the minority free rein to steal and enslave whatever and whoever they liked.”
To successfully steal from and enslave the majority, the minority must first convince the majority that they are oppressed by the status quo.
Our present day, victim-based, everyone gets a trophy, society, this is an especially easy thing to accomplish. Lenin would be astonished that the present day Leftist intelligensia has managed this even though the bulk of the nation knows undreamed-of prosperity, and totally satisfied basic necessities.