Have Any of Karl Marx’s Critics Today Actually Read Him?
The Right never seems to stop talking about “Marxism” and its wily tricks. But for all their denunciations, conservative pundits really just keep proving they don’t even know the basics of Karl Marx’s thought.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the printing house of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (newspaper published in Cologne, Prussia, at the time of the Revolution of 1848–49). Painting by E. Capiro. (Roger Viollet via Getty Images)
Karl Marx deserves a better caliber of critics. I’ve thought that many times in the last few years, but perhaps never more so than in March when I saw the conservative James Lindsay post a picture of himself pretending to pee on Marx’s grave in London.
In honor of Karl Marx being dead 140 years today. pic.twitter.com/svL28YRQ9l
— James Lindsay, full varsity (@ConceptualJames) March 14, 2023
I couldn’t help but notice the lack of any actual stream of urine in the picture. In a way, that made it a perfect metaphor for the Right’s approach to their greatest intellectual adversary. They’re making a show of desecrating his grave. But they know too little about his ideas to even make contact with the target of their critique.
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