Reading Marx: Learning to Reject the False Prophets of Profit

“The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.” ¹

For too long the work of Karl Marx has been dismissed in the United States. The Red Scare, McCarthyism, and the Cold War, all made it a nearly treasonous act to study and promote the works of Marx in this country, and because of this the religiosity of free-marketers has been allowed to reign unchecked for half a century. Political, economic, and social modes of thinking in the United States must revisit the works of Marx and his intellectual descendants in order to better understand the forces of brutal capitalism. Most of all we need to learn how to reject the false prophets of profit.

The quote atop this post is from Marx’s “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” that was first published in 1852 as an article in the New York magazine Die Revolution. ² In this essay, Marx investigates the farce that was the February Revolution of 1851 and argues that the coup d’etat of Louis Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon I, was but a return to the “oldest form, to the shamelessly simple domination of the sabre and the cowl.” Rather than destroy the feudal systems of domination that lingered well into the 19th century, the February Revolution actually restored those modes of power. ³ The importance of this essay to the current state of affairs in the United States cannot be mistaken.

Today, on the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream,” speech thousands of foolish people are listening to a man who “invoked the founding fathers and the ‘black-robed regiment’ of pastors of the Revolutionary War.” ⁴ This person, with a worldwide audience of buffoons hanging on his every disingenuous word, is conjuring the perverted ghosts of American history in order to advance his fake bourgeois revolution. Appealing to god, country, and ways of old, this teabagger icon appropriates some of the greatest of American ideals, and has now appropriated the day, the memory, and the space, of one of the Civil Rights Movement’s greatest moments. The pseudo-celebrity of this Faux News anchor has mutated into what his supporters, and the circle-jerking media, call a movement by doing exactly what Marx says Louis Bonaparte did in 1851.

By appealing to the base fears of American society, people like those who today desecrated the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., are attempting to rewrite the course of history. Unlike the cunning of Louis Bonaparte, the current crop of neo-liberal charlatans are blatantly calling for a return to an era that so many working class people fought and died to make disappear. These people, so-called tea party patriots drape themselves in the constitution, yet rip it apart to suit their xenophobic desires. Marx’s criticism of the false February Revolution certainly applies to the actions of the tea party because this corporate financed “movement” operates not for the advancement of society, of American democracy, or even spiritual glory, but for the benefit of the uber-wealthy. If the tea party wins influence in November the American people will see a  massive drop in public spending, infrastructure, education, health-care, and the list will go on. These false prophets of profit will see America turn to rubble while they build their palaces and transition from their roles as de facto American nobility to de jure nobility with titles, land grants, and the political power to complete the circle.

The burden here falls on the educated classes. Those who had the privilege and time to read Marx’s work, understand it, and concur with his arguments, are bound by their duty to call the tea party for what it is, a ruse perpetrated by the powerful. By rephrasing Marxist thought in the terms of inclusion, democracy, and appeals to the highest standards of human decency, the stigmas of 20th century Stalinism and Maoism, can be overcome. Karl Marx is only revolutionary because the same feudalistic powers that controlled the world in the 17th and 18th centuries are still lingering like putrid smells of a rotting slaughterhouse. As Marx says: “Society now seems to have fallen back behind its point of departure; it has in truth first to create for itself the revolutionary point of departure, the situation, the relationships, the conditions, under which modern revolutions alone becomes serious.” ⁵ We must not allow the Civil Rights Movement to be usurped by the purveyors of hate. Determining who and what we are fighting for is absolutely necessary to be successful in the American Endeavor, and the work of Karl Marx is the place to start.

Living in the land of the “free-market” it is easy to forget that there are other ways of living life especially when you get people like those who drink the kool-aid at tea parties clamoring for “their country back”. If people want to be serious about change, than one of the places we need to look to find our way is in the works of Marx. The United States is a fully developed industrial country, even if we stopped being as industrial as we once were, and our system of democracy, if un-perverted, can successfully begin the transition to a more equitable society. It’s time to revisit Marx with an open mind so that we can learn about the tactics of false prophets of profit.

Technorati Tags: Books, Faux News, Human Rights, Karl Marx, Marxism

Tagged as: Books, Faux News, Human Rights, Karl Marx, Marxism