Marxism, BLM, CRT... Ugh!

• Author: Rosenwasser, Tamzin A.

JUST AS KARL MARX interpreted all of human history as a fight between the "proletariat" (oppressed) and the "capitalists" (oppressors) using a method I only can call illogical abstractionism, so also do the critical race theorists use a rigid abstraction to divide all of mankind into one of two groups.

Marx had no understanding of history or the time course in human affairs. He never set foot in the situations he wrote about with such certainty. The "revolt of the proletariat" never occurred because the people whose strengths did not include invention of machinery or founding of factories (the proletariat) became much more comfortable and wealthier as a result of the existence and work of those whose strengths did include those things (the capitalists). The capitalists provided useful work, and it was an enormous benefit to the proletariat.

Could humanity have managed without refrigerators and automobiles? We did so for millennia. Do you want to return to a world without refrigeration or the other comforts brought to us thanks to capitalism?

To take abstract theories and apply them with deadly force to human beings is not a viable formula for happiness or for unchaining anybody from any kind of oppression. We have history as our guide in judging the result of the abstract theories of Marxism as it was implemented in the Soviet Union. In all places where Marxism, communism, Nazism, fascism, and socialism have been imposed, the major result is not tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, but millions of corpses. Where less force has been used, the most benign result has been economic stagnation and the blighting of human lives.

At least a few people do well--not necessarily the individuals who are so eaten up with the abstract theories that have decided they must be imposed on everyone, but those who survive the brutal political power struggle, such as the Soviet Unions's Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, China's Mao Tse-tung, Cuba's Fidel Castro, and the Kims in North Korea. They live in luxury while people starve and suffer all around them. Marxists like Patrisse Cullors, the Black Lives Matter queen, may...