Karl Marx: Worst Person in World History?

Since more than 100 million people have been killed by communist regimes, should we conclude that Karl Marx is the worst person in world history?

To address that question, let’s start with this video from Prager University, which is narrated by Professor Paul Kengor of Grove City College.

At the risk of understatement, the video is a damning indictment of Marx’s legacy.

His political ideas provided the justification for the genocides of dictators such as Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot.

His economic ideas led to policies that produced mass deprivation, starvation, and immense human suffering.

Now let’s take a closer look at Marx rather than just his ideas.

Was he a good person who simply had some horribly misguided ideals?

Hardly. Everything we know suggests he was a sickeningly despicable excuse for a human being.

Professor Richard Ebeling has some of the sordid details in an article for Intellectual Takeout.

Karl Marx was born on May 5, 1818, in the Rhineland town of Trier. …he was generally a lazy and good-for-nothing student. …Marx’s only real jobs during his lifetime were as occasional reporters for or editors of newspapers and journals most of which usually closed in a short period of time… He had sex enough times with the family maid that she bore him an illegitimate son… He often used racial slurs and insulting words to describe the mannerisms or appearance of his opponents in the socialist movement.  …In Marx’s mind, the Jew in bourgeois society encapsulated the essence of everything he considered despicable in the capitalist system… Marx’s caricaturing description of the asserted “Jewish mindset” rings amazingly similar to those that were later written by the Nazi “race-scientists” of the 1930s.

All told, it appears that Marx lacked a single redeeming feature. He was a very bad person with very bad ideas.

Indeed, it’s safe to assume that the best thing he did in his life occurred on March 14, 1883.

P.S. For those seeking more economic analysis, Marx advocated for the pure version of socialism, meaning government ownership of the means of production (state factories, collective farms, etc).

P.P.S. It’s disgusting that there’s a statue of Marx in his birth city and it’s equally disgusting that the former President of the European Commission went there to celebrate the 200th anniversary of his birth.

P.P.P.S. Marx gets featured frequently in my collection of jokes mocking communism.