It is now two hundred years since Karl Marx was born. Especially as self-described socialists gain attention, it is once again time for a reckoning on the Marxism of Marx. Marx famously spoke in 1848 of a specter haunting Europe—the “specter of Communism.” All the powers in the world, he noted, had entered into a “holy alliance” to “exorcise” the presence of Communism from the European and world stage. At the same time, Marx announced the death knell of the political and economic order he unilaterally called “capitalism.” In the guise of a merely “scientific” analysis, he denounced this order for dehumanizing human beings and for leading to the comprehensive “pauperization” of the vast proletarian underbelly of modern industrial society. Today, we are more likely to pronounce the death of Marxism than of the liberal capitalist order that gave rise to Marx's fear and loathing.
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