This article was spurred by a video I watched promoting the ideas of Karl Marx. The YouTube channel, The School of Life, had a video that shifted the conversation of Marx’s ideas. This prompted me to counter this portrayal of Marx.
I have two more sections to address before we wrap up this series. I think that it is vital to be able to argue against much of the agenda of the state. So when I found this new, or at least new to me, approach for promoting Marxism, I thought it would be a great opportunity to refute his ideas.
I think that the creator of the video tried to water down Marx’s message which may have shed some new light on an old idea, but I think it further diluted the message. If we are going to believe in something then we need to stand with the idea, and not just water it down for the masses. So if you are a Marxist, hold your ground, even if you are a complete buffoon.
Anyways, with no further ado, we flesh out the last two ideas discussed in the video.
Top One Percent
The top one percent is talked about a lot, and I think that it is important to talk about the world as a whole when we discuss these numbers. Most Marxists in first world countries like to cite the wealth discrepancies in their home countries because it favors their position, but if you look at the world, then their numbers don’t seem to favor them as much. If you have an income of $32,400 then you are in the top one percent of the world. There are a lot of numbers out there that attempt to show that over half of Americans fall short of this but they do not take into account unemployment rates, they count 15-year-olds as working adults, and do not factor in wealth transfers, welfare, or company benefits. This is why I would argue that well over half, and I would even venture to guess that 75% of Americans make over $32,400 a year. This is also based on the number of new millionaires that we had in America alone. In 2017, the U.S. saw over 700,000 new millionaires.
How many of the new millionaires are in the top one percent in America? Well, considering that in the U.S. the average income to qualify is $421,926, but even in the state with the highest qualifying income, Connecticut, it is still less than one million. This is also not mentioning the fact that people fall out of the top one percent as well. In a capitalist state, we do not see very many people stay at the top. This is due to letting the market fluctuate with what the people want out of products and services.
Communist Manifesto
This document advocated for the abolition of private property, increased taxation, centralized control of the economy, government education, and more. These ideas are inherently bad. How far do we take the abolition of private property? This would certainly extend to self-ownership. This would mean that in a socialist regime you would not even own yourself, but would rather be a product of the government. This would certainly allow them to be able to take the money that is yours by the use of force and be able to kill anyone that they so choose. After all, all the products and all the revenue belongs to the government. They may say it belongs to the people, but in reality, it belongs to the government. They get paid to manage it and they make all decisions with it.
Some Marxists might claim that this is why they want democratic socialism, but that is basically like saying “tyranny is bad unless 51% says it’s not.” However, the government issued schools will allow this type of thought process to be pushed, which is why schools are so important to Marxists. They tout these types of programs out as free education or public education, but it is really government education.
My final point that I would like to make here is that Marx was basically a bum. Marx’s friend Friedrich Engles supported Marx after he moved to London. The support from the Engles’ family came from their very capitalist venture into the production of cotton, which also was a company that Marx would have seen as perpetuating the classism of workers versus capitalists. However, Marx had no problem taking their money to finance his debt to publish his work, such as the Communist Manifesto.
This means that capitalism paid for socialism, which clearly states that you cannot have socialism without capitalism because if you do not have anyone to steal from, then you have no wealth to redistribute.
Rocky Ferrenburg
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