LETTERS: MARX'S MESSAGE IS MISUNDERSTOOD

To the editor:

I was astonished to learn, thanks to a recent Speak Out caller, that "Hollywood has been leading the Marxist plan to degrade and destroy America." Before reading this, I had been under the assumption that Marxism was an economic system. I was also under the assumption that Hollywood was a capitalist machine. Little did I know that Marxism actually is a horribly immoral and debasing way of life that continues, to this very day, to undermine the fabric of our nation.

I am amazed that I could have read Marx so carelessly and so irresponsibly that I missed the corruption and evil inherent in his words.

Still, something doesn't quite fit in our portrait of Karl Marx. It seems strange that a man so obviously devoid of morals would have fought, as he did with his collaborator Friedrich Engels, for the restriction of child labor. It seems doubly strange that anyone so debase would care about the fate of women forced to work long, grueling days for wages on which no one could possibly survive. And, finally, why would such a man care about human alienation? Why would Marx so tirelessly critique the ways in which society conspires to fetter us, isolate us and pacify us with illusion if these things were his ultimate goals all along?

These inconsistencies can be resolved by actually reading Marx, and those of us who do so in these troubled times find quite a different man than most are generally conditioned to expect. Many parties have done an exceedingly good job of perverting Marx's message in a variety of ways. Lenin, Stalin and the rest of the boys took care of a great deal of this perversion, and we in America watched as what seemed to be Marxism took over whole countries, killed innocents and shouted "We will bury you" at the top of its lungs. This is the Marx that has come down to us, the Marx that seems to be behind everything from poisoning our children to pulling the strings of the Democratic Party.

The real Karl Marx was a radical humanist. He was invested in the life of this world. He cared about the starving and the oppressed peoples of every nation. He wanted humanity to grow into its potential as a free, unchained species, but he understood better than anyone that capitalism was an obstacle in this path. For it is capitalism, rather than Marxism, which enslaves. And when all is said and done, we will have no choice but to laugh at what must surely be one of the great historical ironies of all time. Yet I must save this discussion for another letter.

In the end, I would simply urge everyone not to blindly follow what you have heard or what you have been taught. Pick up a copy of Marx's work. Read it. Judge for yourself. Marx's naked honesty about the world often makes his writing hard to swallow, but it is this same authenticity that also makes it so valuable. For those who are interested, I might suggest the whole of Robert C. Tucker's The Marx-Engels Reader, specifically the Communist Manifesto and "For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing." Also, any of Erich Fromm's criticism of Marx (especially that found in the text "To Have or To Be") will be helpful in illuminating this often misunderstood man.

ADAM M. COX

Cape Girardeau