Why Marx is So Demonised. It's Not Complicated.

Richard Mellor

The statement above expresses the reason Marx is so demonized. A simple slogan, an appeal like "workers of all countries unite" terrifies the ruling class. It's equivalent to "unite the slaves" during the rule of the slaveocracy in the US or in Ancient Greece. "Land to the peasants" is another example for the feudal economic system.

It is a recognition that human society consists of classes and that these classes are based on their role in the social production of human needs and therefore human life.

The government of Guatemala led by Arbenz offered to buy its own land from the United Fruit company that was joined at the hip to the US government in 1953.  Arbenz offered to pay market prices but the US government demanded ten times the price knowing Guatemala could not afford to pay it. Arbenz wanted to give the land to rural Guatemalans, mostly indigenous people so they could produce food for themselves. The US government overthrew Arbenz, blamed communism and placed a flunky in power. 

Same with Iran in 1953-54. Iran wanted to control its own oil industry so the US along with the British that owned it, overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran and installed the Shah. The threat of communism was excuse once again.

Millions of working class people, rural and urban, die because they resist class oppression. We know we are exploited, all workers understand what the "boss" is and does.

And there's a reason Marx's views are seen as the solution to the violence and destruction of capitalism and the so called free market by millions of people throughout the world---because they are a solution. 

That various groups or undemocratic or autocratic regimes claim the legacy of Marxism is not due to the failure of this philosophy or what is really a way of understanding the world and world history and a method for freeing humanity from class oppression and controlling our own destiny. It's the interpretation and false application of it.

That a philosophical understanding of how the world actually works can be so violently opposed by the ruling classes, is so viciously assaulted, is truth enough to its validity.

 

As Marx stated, "Philosophers have only interpreted the world-----the point is to change it.”