Marxism in our times - the same old lies, camouflaged as "political correctness"

 

John Hayward has an interesting series of tweets discussing how Marxism has reared its ugly head yet again, this time under the guise of political correctness.  Here's the thread as compiled by Threadreader.

Conservatives of my generation made the terrible mistake of believing Marxism was fatally discredited with the fall of the Soviet Union, and only a few aging freaks in campus faculty still took it seriously. We weren't ready for the next wave of the mind-virus and its variants. 

It was an easy mistake to make. How could people cling to an ideology that spread death, poverty, and failure around the world, once its primary nation-state supporter lay in ruins - its claims of success across the decades exposed as lies, its victims celebrating their freedom? 

How could so many people ignore the hideous history of Marxism and continue to believe THIS time it will work, THIS time all the bugs have been ironed out, THIS time the right people are finally in charge? Forgive my generation for thinking the horror was finally over. 

Marxism persists because it IS a virus. It was designed that way - give the old devil and his disciples credit for being ahead of the curve in realizing that an ideology could be custom-tailored to propagate itself endlessly, without needing any nourishment from success. 

Marxism is designed to spread by infection, to subvert and overturn institutions, to destabilize societies, to feed upon the offal of greed and envy, which it metabolizes into "virtues." It infects young minds by presenting itself as the utopia that has never been reached. 

Every single aspect of Marxist theory is designed to protect and perpetuate the ideology no matter how badly it fails, most notably including the elements of every Marxist ideology that justify the use of violence against those who threaten it, or refuse to submit to its demands. 

An ideology that asserts dissent from its principles in good faith is impossible - making dissent a sin punishable by loss of rights, confiscation of property, imprisonment, torture, or death - is well on its way to insulating itself against any degree of objective failure. 

The most viral element of Marxism, the DNA that carries over into all its mutations, is the elimination of individual responsibility - the promise of "justice" and "entitlement" achieved through collective power. Every strain of Marxism tells adherents they have been exploited. 

This is reflected in the core economic assumption of Marxism: capitalism "exploits" workers and "steals" the value of their labor. All of Marxism's misery and bloody horror, all of the failure and brutal civil warfare it spreads through societies it infects, flows from this idea. 

Marxism tells the infected that profit is theft. When an employer hires them for $15 an hour and sells the product of their labor for $20, the employer is "stealing" $5 of value that rightfully belongs to the worker. The employer is a parasite. 

You might ask, "How am I supposed to generate that $20 of value unless a business hires me? Doesn't the employer provide valuable to the enterprise? Didn't he take risks starting that business? Didn't I take this job voluntarily? Isn't working better than lying around?" 

Marxism has answers for those questions, and its entire toxic ideology, all its society-destroying mutations - right up to Critical Race Theory and the vicious stupidity of wokeism - are built from those answers. The answers teach its subjects to value collectivism over freedom. 

"How am I supposed to generate $20 of value unless a business hires me?" Marxism says capital should be owned collectively - by everyone, by no one. In theory, The People own the capital and "share" it. In practice, it ALWAYS ends up in the hands of greedy, despotic politicians. 

"Doesn't the employer add value to the enterprise?" No, he's a capitalist exploiter who gets fat and rich by stealing the excess value of your labor. The collective - the State - should "give" you everything you need to thrive because you "deserve" it. 

"Didn't the employer take risks starting the business?" That's just a lie fatcat rich capitalists use to justify their obscene profits. Under Marxism, there is no risk. Wise central planners decide where capital goes, doing the best for everyone and bringing "economic justice." 

"Didn't I take this job voluntarily?" No, you only think you did. You have a "false consciousness" of freedom. Work under capitalism is slavery disguised as liberty. Only when the wise and loving State frees you from need are you TRULY free to exercise your will. 

"Isn't working better than lying around?" Under Marxism, all costs and risks will be socialized, spreading them so thin that they disappear. Everything important will be "free!" In return, the State may require you to make some contributions in accordance with your abilities. 

This is the only "just" model of labor under Marxist theory - it's all about people "contributing" "sharing," and "helping," as directed by their brilliant scientific State - which all agree is the only legitimate authority, since all consent to be governed by it. 

Never again should any defender of freedom underestimate the seductive viral appeal of these ideas, especially to young minds. Marxism is a vision of society run like a big family. It appeals to kids from good families... and those who desperately WISH they had good families. 

Marxism flatters envy and transforms it into a virtue. It offers a regimented vision of society that appears logical once its (entirely false) basic premises are accepted. It claims to makes sense of a senseless and unjust world - very appealing to the young and alienated. 

Most importantly, Marxism lifts the burden of individual responsibility from its acolytes. "Socializing" costs and consequences, classifying all misfortune as "exploitation," dividing people into static classes at war with each other - it all says nothing is YOUR fault. 

Every strain of Marxism tells its victims that they can never hope to find success, fairness, justice, equity - whatever euphemism becomes fashionable after the old ones wear out - on their own. You can never get a fair shake from a system rigged to exploit you at every turn. 

Only the State, the collective, can deliver justice and fairness. Only through collective power can you overthrow the exploiters and steal back your capital, defeat systemic racism, remake humanity into a New Soviet Man better-suited for collective effort and ready for utopia. 

And once you join the Marxist collective, you're not individually responsible for DOING anything. You just have to vote the right way, mouth the correct slogans, obey when your betters give you marching orders, and agitate against the old unjust order - which is FUN. 

Marxism's viral engineering redefines every sin and indulgence as a virtue, provided it gives Marxism more power and helps it spread. Everything that feeds the collective and destabilizes the old society is either encouraged or tolerated, including criminal violence. 

Can you see why this ideology is so infectious, how it has survived so many hideous failures and mutates so readily into new strains, bypassing any immunity built up by healthy societies? It has answers, and excuses, for everything. It supplies enemies, and plans to defeat them. 

We should not have been surprised that Marxism would endure, since its adherents control so much of academia, culture, and the information space. They rewrite history daily in their thought-virus laboratories to keep it alive and virulent. 

They do this because the smartest thing Marxism's developers did was program it to reward the elite who spread it. It's a perfect weapon for destroying and looting civilizations, then it helps the "revolution" become permanent tyranny. THAT part of the code works perfectly.

True enough.  I saw far too much of Marxism's pernicious influence in Africa over several decades.  It was poison then, and it's poison now.  Sadly, because it promises the world to credulous, unsophisticated minds who believe its claims, it's unlikely to be consigned to the trash heap of political history, where it belongs.  There'll always be suckers willing - wanting - to believe that they can get something for nothing, or at someone else's expense.

As a veteran friend of mine said the other day, "I thought I was done with shooting at communists, but now there's a fine new crop of them needing thinning - and this time they're not Over There, they're Right Here."

Peter