Who was Karl Marx?

I find it interesting how, about a year ago, I saw a piece wherein Glenn Beck was debating a "Karl Marx" character (who talked like a spaced-out hippie) about the progressive income tax. Beck, of course, was against it while "Marx" was all for it.

In real life, Marx and Beck would have been in agreement on the PIT, albeit for different reasons. Marx felt that a system that taxed income progressively and provided social services would make the working class more complacent, less class conscious, and less revolutionary. It's right there in the Communist Manifesto.

Based on that reasoning, perhaps Glenn Beck and his paymasters should instead be in favor of the progressive income tax, hmmmm?

Also Marx said that "capitalism was a necessary" on the way to socialism and communism. Eventually the whole economic system will implode and greed will be snuffed out once and for all when the proletariat rises up to seize control. We the people, the 99%, are waking up. And the retribution against the predatory capitalists will be awesome....when awesome really meant something kind of awesome. As in "shock and awe"....

Marx is the convenient bogeyman so that fascists can further their own agenda.

Wether you love him or hate him, the man had ideas. His critiques of capitalism and all the inherent problems of it cannot be ignored. I think we are seeing how unsustainable who current systems are, and we need to entertain alternative paths. Marx is an excellent place to start that conversation.

If you want to understand today's economic struggles, you only need to read a few "off the wall" economic thinkers such as Vleben(the consumer culture), Malthus(the exploitation of limited resources) and Marx(the inherent flaws of capitalism). We live in a unique era with advanced technology, overpopulation and diminishing resources. We are confronting unique challenges never faced before by humans. Only the willfully blind can ignore many of the predictions that have come true from such forward thinkers. We can decide what works for us and what doesn't. We cannot afford to demonize the works of these men just because they threaten the status quo. We need to study all solutions, consider all alternatives and keep an open mind. Only by honest an debate of ideas can we progress into a future advance civilization. The moment we limit ourselves to antiquated prejudices and fail to consider all alternatives, our civilization will meet its inevitable end.

He believed in public education and the right to bear arms . Hard to argue with that , if you are a T party member .... I am impressed that it took him so many years of study .... well done sir !

One of the greatest prophets and visionaries of the 20th century. We have so much struggles and death because we are in a transitory phase as a global society. If we embrace Karl Marx's idea's the suffering and capitalist exploitation will be put to an end.

As Marx said: "The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism."

Marx invokes fear in me. Not because of his politics, but because he is the reason for getting a C in political philosophy. The translation of his Communist Manifesto was too difficult for me. The professor wrote on my paper that he could tell I did not read the material. I tried.

Today, my explanation of why Communism failed is that Marx and Engels were too difficult for the people to understand so that Lenin made up the rules as he went along.

I could care less who he was as a man I know what he did that mattered and that was expose a fundenetal truth about the evolutionary track of scociety and the reigns of power in that evolving scociety and the inevitability of the outcome, that the owners will one day shed their fear of want and realize their place of power as the true makers of all things.

Marx was the game changer in economic and philosophical theory emerging from Hegel and Kant as the force for modern discourse. Of course Marx was flawed in his belief the world was ripe for revolution in his time, but in some clever ways his writings show his skepticism towards that by mentioning the threat of the petite bourgeoisie as a counter revolutionary force. It should be noted Marx never outlined a plan that enabled any of its bastard interpretations of communist dictatorships but rather offered a starting point to critique society.

However the Soviet Union was something horrible, it wasn't a proletarian dictatorship it was what it was, a bourgeoisie revolution wearing the masking of a working class revolution which provoked Guy Debord to refer to Soviet Russia as the "mortal enemy of the working class" or existed as a much more "banal" cousin of capitalism locked into an ideology which it had to pretend existed.

In my own assessment Soviet Russia emerged as the perfect enemy of capitalist society, in that it helped perpetuate the need for commodity which capitalist societies need in order to move around surplus production around (extra resources & labor to maintain the money cycle). In short capitalism needed the soviet union in order to justify its own methods and policies.

My departure from Marx led me to Bakunin

*yes to be honest its hard for me not throw up when the average American uses the word "Marxist" in context of equating them with any liberal leader in the last 100 years.