A Most Misunderstood Man: Karl Marx.

Political Philosopher Karl Marx , the Most Hated ,
most misunderstood , and most misinterpreted
man of all time . His followers oppressed people
contrary to his original theory .

There was one political philosopher , or just one plain philosopher that was so misunderstood that his vary name sends many on the edge . The namesake Karl Marx. Marx was the founder of the communist system that the west dreads . Being labeled a "Marxist" can be a nasty things in "politics", but that all depends on what side of the table that your on .There was a fifty year war in living memory that will make sure most Americans have, at best, a vague antipathy towards communism and anyone invoking it for many years to come. Marx is just some hazy outline of a person, he lives in a black and white television... probably looks just like Stalin. Marx is misunderstood mostly for the same reasons nearly every idea is misunderstood. Because most people only have a few things they give a care about, and for the rest they're content to trust what others tell them. Most people who have opinions of any kind on any philosopher. In America , and years of the cold war etiquette against the (1)> Soviet Union . Marx received a tainted image . As not much as why Marx was "hated" because his "failed" followers : Lenin , Stalin and Mao did so much evil in their interpretation of his philosophy. His main political theory was his war against labor abuses something that Lenin and Stalin both contributed in their vain attempt in the "classless" Soviet society . Marx has  probably has influenced America much more thank we think , forget the anti-communist McCarthy era of the 1950's which " re -shaped" the Democratic party .One of the things that many people don't recognize about Marxism is the degree to which it influences the politics of the right. In essence, the center-right is a product of Marxism for it is the politics of economic individualists who believe that the savagery of the market needs to be mitigated if major political upheaval is to be avoided and patterns of property ownership are to be sustained. Marx can be credited to have started the worker's movements that became "unions" for short . Remember this clique , The working class ^^ (the "proletariat") in Marxist terms, does not mean only factory or industrial workers, as is commonly supposed, but rather, the vast majority of society - the 99%. We are that 99% of our nations working class people as so defined by Marx .This applies equally today to the car worker, the office clerk, the teacher, and the junior doctor .

Marxism is blurry of misinformation in Our Society .
It's not commonly taught in the US - because it isn't taught, people don't know what it is. Most Americans have never read Marx, they just know the little bits of rhetoric they hear, do not bother to evaluate any claims empirically, and leave it at that. Marxism is rarely if ever discussed in American mainstream discourse, and when it is, it is discussed by charlatans who have no fucking clue what they are talking about. Most American mainstream journalists and pundits were hired for their looks and/or their ability to follow orders, not their sophisticated socio-economic analyses.Disinformation - The entire idea of Marxism is extremely threatening to the American way of life, that it must be discredited for the survival of the current economic paradigm. We have a history of multiple "Red Scares" where Marxist movements were strong enough to scare the shit out of the ruling class and those who aptly saw the nightmarish Marxian states. Smear campaigns became cultural memes that never completely died out.The Cold War - The US, being one of the most powerful capitalist nations inevitably squared off with the most powerful socialist nation (USSR). These 2 societies were inevitably mutually exclusive, and thus became mortal enemies. In such a conflict, a massive propaganda campaign was launched as part of the efforts of both sides to destroy the other. In this case, the US won. Still, the propaganda is in our collective psyches. Most national experiments in Marxism failed miserably - Virtually all Marxist revolutions failed to deliver their promises, and in fact brought incredible misery in the changes that ensued. The reasons for this are vast, but ultimately history has shown Marxism to be a failure in its professed claims. This does not mean that Marxism hasn't inspired successful political movements and policies that have been implemented with positive results, but generally speaking, and state past or present that claims to be Communist or Marxist is probably a hell hole. We've thrown the baby out with the bathwater - Clearly Marxian states have failed, but the majority of Marx's writings address critiques of capitalism, rather than pragmatic solutions to it. While it's vital to have pragmatic solutions to capitalism, Marx's critique of capitalism is still mostly right on, and as valid today as it ever was. However, most people don't think in this way. They see the failure of Marxian states as impetus to discredit everything Marx has written.Because Marxist states failed, doesn't mean that a Marxian critique of capitalism is without validity, just as because Hitler had a mustache, doesn't mean that mustaches are anti-semetic and authoritarian.

Marx's war against Child Labor.

Originally (***)Marx fought against two social evils of his day.  (3)>>Slavery and Child Labor. Shamefully the Capitalists giants kept slaves , and put children as part of the labor force during the Industrial revolution . This became Marx's own hatred for his society and it's evils produced the “Communist Manifesto” stated that all men were born free but that society had got to such a state that the majority were in chains. The many social evils and economic contradictions that capitalism engenders are for the most part insoluble and endless. No matter what reform efforts are made to mitigate the impact of those evils and contradictions, they continue to plague society in varying degrees. Some of those problems may at times and on the surface even appear to have been mitigated only to have them flare up again. The vicious and unconscionable exploitation of child labor provides a case in point.Although child labor existed in varying degrees in many enterprises in different parts of the world during the 17th century and earlier, it did not really receive recognition as a social evil until the factory system was introduced in England in the late 18th century. There, in a relatively short time, child labor became a major factor in production, particularly—but not exclusively—in the cotton mills. This  vivid picture of those unwholesome conditions, as does Karl Marx in Capital, in the section dealing with “The Working Day.”Here in the United States, child labor was introduced on a major scale in cotton mills by Samuel Slater, who came to this country from England in 1790. As Mitchell Wilson noted in his excellent and interesting work, American Science and Invention, Slater drew “on his English training” and “staffed his factory with children from four to ten years old.” However, compared to the working conditions imposed on children in England, the working conditions in Slater’s factory were relatively benign, though the hours were long, the pay low and the exploitation intense. However, at a time when children in America generally were given chores on the family farm practically as soon as they could walk, Slater’s child-labor practices elicited little objection. In fact, it was not until Slater established the American Sunday School for his child employees that people became offended, charging that he was profaning the Sabbath.

Marx and Women's Equality.

The classical Marxists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Clara Zetkin, Rosa Luxemburg, V. I. Lenin, Alexandra Kollontai, and Leon Trotsky—developed a theoretical framework tying the fight for women’s liberation to the struggle for socialism. While their theory requires updating,² their enormous contributions have too often been dismissed or ignored.Moreover, the history of those who carried on the Marxist tradition on women’s oppression during the mid-twentieth century has frequently been rendered invisible—yet these activists and theorists provided an indispensible thread that continued between the victory of women’s suffrage in the 1920s (often referred to as US feminism’s “first wave” and the rise of the 1960s movements for women’s liberation (known as its “second wave”).Marxism has always been at the forefront of the cause of women's emancipation. The 8th of March (International Women's Day) is a red letter day for us as it symbolises the struggle of working class women against capitalism, oppression and discrimination throughout the world. We are publishing an updated version of the document we published last year on March 8, where we outline the first steps given by Marxism to fight for women's rights, what the first successful revolution meant for the emancipation of women, conditions of women under capitalism both in advanced and Third World countries and pose the question of how to eliminate inequality between men and women for good.But the capitalist system regards women merely as a convenient source of cheap labour and part of the "reserve army of labour" to be drawn on when there is a shortage of labour in certain areas of production, and discarded again when the need disappears. We saw this in both world wars, when women were drafted into the factories to replace men who had been called up into the army and then sent back to the home when the war ended. Women were again encouraged to enter the workplaces during the period of capitalist upswing of the 1950s and 1960s, when their role was analogous to that of the immigrant workers--as a reservoir of cheap labour. In the more recent period, the number of women workers has increased to fill gaps in the productive process. But, despite all the talk about a "woman's world" and "girl power", and despite all the laws that supposedly guarantee equality, women workers remain the most exploited and oppressed section of the proletariat. 

President Obama not a MARXIST  sorry.

Hate to offend the right wingers who called Obama a Marxist by definition . President Obama would FAIL the test of being a Marxist . For the last six years of his Presidency , Obama did not abolish taxation.Taxes jumped the roof with his Obamacare . Karl Marx was openly against any form of taxes , (2)>  which STRANGELY enough was adopted by the Conservative- Tea Party - Reagan minded political GOP ! Sorry , Contrary to what some conspiracy-theorist Republicans claim, President Obama is not a Marxist, Socialist or Communist. First of all Obama is a vary bad Capitalist , since he became American's President the federal deficit nears 18 trillion !Still, most Americans would deny Obama's Marxist outlook, mistaking the term's meaning as synonymous with Stalin or Mao.  Marxist theory informed many of history's most murderous tyrants, but Obama's brand is the emasculated theorizing of the faculty lounge.  He neither intends similar mayhem nor has such means in our constitutional republic. Driven by this sort of rhetoric, a conviction has taken hold among many conservatives that the president is actively hostile to the very idea of a market-based economy. That’s a much different charge than the one Obama seemed likely to face just a few months ago — not that he was too hostile to capitalism, but that he was too accommodating of it. Obama’s indulgence toward the big Wall Street banks after the financial crisis once appeared to be his greatest vulnerability. Some Democrats in Congress can even pinpoint the date on which they believe the American public turned against them and the president, driven by disgust over Wall Street’s unchecked excesses. It was March 15, 2009, when the news broke that executives at AIG would receive millions of dollars in bonuses.  During the Obama Presidency . Not much else can be sad here .

Last Note by Karl Marx himself.

“The less you eat, drink and read books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save-the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor dust will devour-your capital. The less you are, the more you have; the less you express your own life, the greater is your alienated life-the greater is the store of your estranged being.” ― Karl Marx

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

(1)> But was the Soviet Union really communist? I'm not an expert on political history but I don't think the proletariat ever controlled the means of production. In fact, the proletariat didn't even start the revolution. The states that are called failed examples of communism are actually failed examples of totalitarianism. In Soviet Russia , the system was dominated by corruption , and any false communist states like Romania , which it's dictator lived more like a monarch .  GUILTY STILL, Look at North Korea. Kim Jong Ill is living like a king while his constituents are poor and starving. The same was happening under Stalin, Mao, Castro............... I thought communism meant the people have power and everyone benefits equally so the ruling class arent exploiting people and walking away with all the money.Simple: they aren't real  communist. Communism is the ideology that promotes a stateless, classless, and moneyless society. As you can see, we haven't had that yet. What you have instead are totalitarian dictatorships that lace their political rhetoric with communist ideals in order to ameliorate the public. It's kind of how the US talks about freedom and democracy when we're really just a plutocratic oligarchy.(***) Marx was for way back in the 1840's Free education for all children in public schools. The abolition of child labour in factories; an educated child would be better for society in the long term, than a child not educated. Marx vary well noted in his monumental work The Capital :

"The labour of women and children was, therefore, the first thing sought for by capitalists who used machinery. That mighty substitute for labour and labourers was forthwith changed into a means for increasing the number of wage-labourers by enrolling, under the direct sway of capital, every member of the workman's family, without distinction of age or sex. Compulsory work for the capitalist usurped the place, not only of the children's play, but also of free labour at home within moderate limits for the support of the family." (K. Marx, Capital, vol. 1. pp. 394-5.

^^ (the "proletariat") in Marxist terms.  (in Marxist theory) the class of workers, especially industrial wage earners, who do not possess capital or property and must sell their labor to survive. 3. the lowest or poorest class of people, possessing no property, especially in ancient Rome. Origin of proletariat Expand.It's us wage earners struggling to survive "our society" in general .While the American government offer's hope and change the American dream is being squashed under heavy taxation and unilateral regulation . (2)> A LAUGHABLE MOMENT . The GOP has considered a war against Taxes against which  Democrats over the years raised to pay off the natioanl debt . . The Republican Party might come out to be Marxist's themselves ! (3)>> PLEASE READ KARL MARX's LETTER TO AMERICAN PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN . Go to this URL https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm. Praising Mr. Lincoln's war against SLAVERY.