Henry Hazlitt on Marxism

The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are.  Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community.  Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others.  Never under any circumstances admit that your own failure may be owing to your own weakness, or that the failure of anyone else may be due to his own defects - his laziness, incompetence, improvidence, or stupidity.

~ Henry Hazlitt

Alasdair Macleod on Karl Marx

Marx was a dead-beat plotter, who should have simply sunk into obscurity. But like Keynes in the following century, he made his half-truths sound eminently plausible. His training as a philosopher imparted a respectability to his theories. 

[...] 

The reason Marx was a thoroughly bad man, even evil, was he plotted not just the domination of one country, but the whole world by advocating the destructive forces of civil violence. He was a poor parody of a Bond villain. And as is the case with all socialists, he wanted total domination. You could take the view that he was a latter-day Don Quixote, delusional and mad, and that Engels was a sort of financial Sancho Panza without the wit. This would be incorrect. Marx was a failure as a philosopher, and instead of rethinking and recanting, he moved from a position of preparing himself for a leading role in what he saw as inevitable, to advocating violent social destruction. 

It was Marx’s wrong-headed philosophy that led to the deaths of a hundred million souls, perpetrated by those he inspired, as well as the enslavement of most of the population of the Eurasian land-mass.

~ Alasdair Macleod, "The Worst Man in Modern History," LewRockwell.com, May 14, 2018

Rob Weir on Karl Marx's theory of exploitation

Q: What do Libertarians and economists on Quora think of the Surplus Value exploitation brought up my Marxists? 

A: From an economic perspective it is incoherent nonsense.  But it lingers on for its rhetorical value. 

Remember, it was never the case that Marx sweated over his economic thinking, writing two thick books and nearly finishing a third, before he arrived at the conclusion that capitalism was bad and socialism was the way forward. 

It was nothing like this.  Marx came to his conclusion relatively early in his life, based on his philosophical leanings, stuff he cobbled together from Hegel and others.  He went to economics in an attempt to make a “scientific” argument for what he already thought to be true. 

That economic argument was a total mess, and no serious economist takes it seriously today.  It is only good for slogans now.  However, the underlying philosophical insights that led Marx along this path, views on things like alienation, exploitation, class, dialectic, historical materialism, etc., all these non-economic ideas, have been quite durable and pervade the humanities and the social sciences, to this day.

~ Rob Weir, Quora, January 4, 2021

Paul Gottfried on the modern Left

After the collapse of Soviet Communism a more extreme left emerged, the consequences of which we are now enduring. Today’s left is far more radical than the one it replaced, and in its Western heartland it has become far more socially destructive than Marxism or communism. If Communists had to infiltrate Western governments during and after World War II, now the intersectional left virtually owns Western societies and governments. 

This now-triumphant left happily plays race, gender, and hate-the-West cards, depending on which is the most useful tool for it to wreak havoc or increase its own power, and these two goals often go together. The question then becomes how to stop this pervasive force from further corrupting our institutions, particularly when so little pushback is in evidence. One precondition may be to recognize the modern left’s uniqueness and to stop equating it with “socialism” or “communism.” This archaic labeling may understate the danger.

~ Paul Gottfried, "The Modern Left Is Not Marxist, It's Worse," Chronicles, November 2020

Tom DiLorenzo compares cultural Marxism to past Marxist revolutions

The whole history of Marxist revolutions is that the older civilization, which may have evolved over centuries, is in fact destroyed and then replaced with nothing but totalitarian thuggery, corruption, violence, and mass killing.

~ Tom DiLorenzo, "Your Marxist Revolutionary Sons and Daughters," LewRockwell.com, October 16, 2020

Bradley Thomas on the Marxist goals of BLM

BLM is no different from other Marxist groups. The organization’s goals extend far beyond police abuse and police brutality. The ultimate goal is the abolition of a society based upon private property in the means of production.

~ Bradley Thomas, "Why Marxists Organizations Like BLM Seek to Dismantle the 'Western Nuclear Family'," Mises.org, July 27, 2020

Henry Hazlitt on Marxism

The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are.  Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community.  Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others...  This basic hatred is the heart of Marxism.

~ Henry Hazlitt

Nassim Taleb on confusing the social science of economics with the physical sciences

It was confidently believed that the scientific successes of the industrial revolution could be carried through into the social sciences, particularly with such movements as Marxism.  Pseudoscience came with a collection of idealistic nerds who tried to create a tailor-made society, the epitome of which is the central planner.  Economics was the most likely candidate for such use of science; you can disguise charlatanism under the weight of equations, and nobody can catch you since there is no such thing as a controlled experiment.

~ Nassim Taleb, Fooled by Randomness, 2nd Edition, p. 108