I’m not exactly Marxist but I’m more terrified by those who judge his works without having legitimately studied it critically and in depth under supervision.
He’s a lightning rig for prejudice and too many people equate Marx with Stalin, or believe him to have caused Stalin.
Perhaps it was an unfortunate choice of words, but that sounds a lot like indoctrination and elitism.
Importantly, Marx did not advocate for a totalitarian political regime. That's a big deal, because that's a defining element of Stalinism. Marx didn't cause that aspect; the aspect that people actually detest. Stalin did. His military underlings did.
I'll say it again, because it's very misunderstood, generally speaking: Marx did not advocate totalitarianism.
Another underlying point is that violent men come from many places, and given the conditions of early 20th century Russia, I would argue the Russians would have had their violent revolution and totalitarian regime, Marxism or not. Like the French had happen to them. Violence begets violence, and Russia, under their monarchy, was an ugly place and had been for a very long time.
So, Stalin was probably coming no matter what, I hate to say. And he was a totalitarian, unlike Marx.
Interesting side note: Stalin was a darling in the U.S. before we demonized him after we were done with the War. Kind of like Saddam Hussein.
Did a military underling write that?
Try asking anyone at all what their views are on a suggested policy saying "we will make it impossible for you to own private property!" It's delusional to imagine that such a program could not be accomplished without a totalitarian revolution.
I'm not saying social scientists are pro-Stalian or other suggested nonsense in some comments. I'm merely saying that, compared to every other subject, it is shocking to me that such a high proportion identity as Marxist as it is a relatively extreme political belief. It seems analogous to a high proportion of biologists being creationist. In fact, almost every single social scientist is left wing. That and 80% of humanities papers being sent into a vacuum never to be cited again, suggests to me that there is a crisis.
Most people also believed the Earth to be the center of the universe.
Marx got the labor theory of production wrong. He blames the capitalists for unjustly acquiring the "means of production" and uses that as an excuse for violently stealing and murdering those people.
He would literally insist that you must have stolen for someone because you have a successful 1-man blog earning lots of money.
His argument is that it is nit the capitalist (blog writer) that is responsible for profit.... but the ISP, computer manufacturing factory workers, etc.
And from there would support stealing what you earn because you must have exploited somebody to gain wealth.
Pure evil class hatred
I don't know how anyone can see these statistics and not think that there is a crisis.
I nearly took history at undergraduate. My colleague has an English degree but now works in CS with me. What's shocking is that, at age 16, we're meant to make these huge decisions for our lives and we really have no clue about the ramifications.