Is it Marx's fault for the wrong-doings of communism ?

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Karl Marx promised 'paradise' to workers and Hell for Capitalists.  This plays into the mindset of people who are tired of busting their humps all day for barely enough pay to survive while the business owners rake in all the profits.  It is similar to the empty promises Trump makes when appealing to white male Americans who have seen their jobs taken over by non-whites, women, and foreign workers.

Well they are the best examples left, China still has a national congress but yeah I get your point, there's no pure communism left

So did Christ.



Marx presented his ideas to people to use and respond to, though. Trump made these promises so he could then influence the policy of a country. I see Marx from a literary perspective, if anything. And at least he had opinions--Trump will say whatever works in the moment.

I also find Marx a convenient scapegoat for people. It's stupid to think (large) social systems are not going to be exploited by unscrupulous people. Humans have expected salvation from society long before Marx came along. Instead of waiting for answers, these people should also analyze the societies they live in, and take some responsibility.

 

The failures of the various Leninist dictatorships are far more complicated than any single factor.

Yuval Harari describes Marxism as a techno-religion in which the machines do all the work, liberating humans from hunger and poverty.
Sure, the target audience is the same - the actual working class who sell their bodies in acts of back-breaking labour.
But the "enemy" and the "vision" are very different from Trump's.
I mean, Trump is promising people that back-breaking labour would return to a high-wage country, and pay enough to justify the back-breakiness.
But what's wrong with a vision of machines doing the hard work? By and large, that is the case already. What's left is HITs - Human intelligence tasks.
But the obvious problem is that Automation creates a useless class, and a machine-owning class. Marx didn't foresee that, but Marxist ownership distribution is one way of dealing with the problem.

The soviet union accelerated the neo-capitalist stranglehold over the global economy. Convenient bogeyman

Okay, I need to see that movie, and not for the economics lesson.

Now China and the Soviet Union have joined to rule the globe economy, maybe more. Nice tie, man.

how? before the soviet union collapsed, before there was "no alternative", there were workers' rights movements in western countries, there were socialist parties that at least somewhat deserved that label. After the sovoet union collapsed, capitalusm globalised and ushered in this new colonialism under wall street leadership that would rather zombify after 2008 than get reformed.

Anti-communism prevented the rise of socialist governments rising in the developing world.

Neo-colonial governments accepted US/European aid to prevent being overrun by communists. Strings attached - US and EU companies getting prime contracts for mining, resource extraction and manufacturing.

China is (ironcially) doing the same neo-colonial takeover taking advantage of corrupt dictators and only just started doing the same in Africa

Anti-communism also meant putting Hitler into power, replacing elected socialists with capitalist dictators and arming radical islamic forces in Afghanistan.
It's not clear to me to what extent these neo-colonial governments you speak of were trying to get away from a soviet threat, and how much of it was corrupt regimes deliberately selling out their country to prevent any form of revolution, using US-backing against their own people.

I would blame Lenin more than Marx. Marx was largely theoretical and did not foresee the difficulties that would come with realizing his theories. He was also a product of his time--when understanding of history was limited by our standards and the consequences of two world wars could not be foreseen.

Lenin popularized the idea of the vanguard party of the revolution which opened the door for totalitarianism. If your party wasn't the vanguard of the revolution, then it was against the recolution. No room for dissent even within the socialist framework. There were plenty of other socialist/anarchist/leftist parties and factions in Russia before the Civil War, and they were brutally suppressed alongside the conservative Whites. One can only wonder what the Soviet Union could have looked like if it had become an accountable, multi-party democracy (even if most or all of those parties were communist) working towards revolution with a degree of decentralization.

The actions of the Bolsheviks have been used for decades to condemn groups which the Bolsheviks considered antithetical to themselves and would serve as an example that the likes of Pot and Mao would emulate.

actually,



Marx was considered "Hegelian", but I guess didnt get his hands on a copy of "Right", or else more likely it didnt fit into his tiny little kernel of a mind.

Communism is the society's fault, if they are obedient to things that are out of line with what being a human being is.

People who turn to communism aren't necessarily bad people; rather, they feel capitalism and the existing class system has not only failed them, but has oppressed them. The greatest defense against communism is a good wage, an entrance into middle class life, and the protection of organized labor and progressive politics that allow those things to be possible.