Darrell Castle talks about the 200th birthday of Karl Marx and what Marxism has meant to the world and what it means to us today.

Transcript / Notes

KARL MARX—HIS 200TH BIRTHDAY

Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report.  Today is Friday, May 11, 2018.  On today’s Report, I will be talking about the bicentennial of the birth of Karl Marx and what his life has meant to the world and what it means to us today.

Marx was born May 5, 1818, and lived for 64 years.  He was born into a middle class family and studied law and philosophy.  His maternal grandfather was a Jewish Rabbi and he also had Rabbis on his father’ side.  Eventually his father joined the Evangelical Church of Prussia but Karl was baptized into the Lutheran Church a little after that.

He was born in the small German town of Trier but had to leave for Belgium, and then France, as more and more countries grew tired of those who advocated what Karl did.  Eventually he settled in London, although he was then considered a stateless person.

Marx’s theories about religion, society, economics, and politics are together known today as "Marxism".  He held that nothing much mattered in the human society except class struggle.  Societies develop through class struggle, which manifests itself in the conflict between the ruling classes, or the bourgeoisie, and the working classes, or proletariat.  The ruling classes control the means of production and that enables them to buy the labor of the working classes and sell it for profit.  He believed that the profit of the bourgeoisie was theft from the worker.

Eventually he predicted, through organized revolutionary action, that working classes would topple capitalism and replace it with a kind of utopia which he called "communism".  I would argue that where Marxism has been tried throughout its history, it has never progressed beyond socialism, and that includes Soviet Russia, and China.  The Communist utopia has never been achieved because it is impossible to achieve, and efforts to achieve it led to the roughly 100 million deaths attributed to communism.

Although he wrote many things, including fiction and poetry, he is known for his two most famous works,  The Communist Manifesto, and the three volume, Das Capital.  In his poetry he often expressed high regard for Satan, and said that he had struck a deal with him.  In his poem The Fiddler, he said “With Satan I have struck my deal, He chalks the signs, beats time for me I play the death march fast and free. “

His poetry also expresses his thirst for destruction and his hatred of the existing order of society.  Some of it sounds like the biblical description of Satan’s rebellion and war against God, “Then I will be able to walk triumphantly, like a god, through the ruins of their kingdom.  Every word of mine is fire and action.  My breast is equal to that of the Creator.”

These thoughts expressed in Marx’s writings led to the deaths of 10’s of millions and probably up to 100 million.  Wherever it has been tried, mass slaughter has been the result, and any social institution independent of the all-powerful state has been undermined and destroyed.  Institutions, such as the New York Times and other media publications, apparently see no need to apologize for their advocacy of such a violent and destructive philosophy.

One week before Marx’s birthday the New York Times published an op-ed piece after having previously published a string of pro socialist articles.  The op-ed was entitled “Happy Birthday Karl Marx—You Were Right.”  It was written by Jason Barker, professor of cultural studies in Kyung Hee University, of South Korea.  It seems the New York Times is trying very hard to rehab a philosophy of murder and tyranny.  Why is anybody’s guess.

Marx was far more honest about the intent of Communism than is the New York Times today.  While the Times tries to ignore the tyranny and destruction,