Some argue that the cause of the failure of actually existing communism is that Marx’s theories were not properly applied and that they simply need to be put into practice correctly. However, the reality is that the origin of the great suffering and injustices caused by Communism lies within Marx’s own books. That is where one must look for the root of that great tree with its various ideological branches of communism and the like.

Read LET US AVOID HARM!: Let us understand the suffering caused by communism and similar ideologies

Read PREVENT HARM!: Let us remember the atrocities committed by Soviet communism so they are never repeated

Read LET US AVOID HARM!: Let us reject the barbarities perpetrated by Asian communism

Read LET US AVOID HARM!: Let us be aware of the harm caused by Chavismo so that it does not spread to other countries

Although it is probably true, as some say, that both Marx and Engels genuinely believed that the communist venture would end with a much happier outcome than it actually did, they laid the main foundations for the purgatory (if not an authentic hell) that Communism ultimately became. Two of these foundations are class struggle (as opposed to mutually beneficial cooperation between employers and employees, suppliers and customers) and violent revolution to seize power (as opposed to voting at the polls). In fact, Marx had extensive knowledge of history and was therefore well-informed about the Reign of Terror and the Great Terror of the French Revolution, a revolution that inspired his communist revolution. He thus knew that violent revolutions, especially when a minority seeks to impose itself on the majority, can involve murders, torture, deprivation of liberty, and other forms of suffering inflicted upon innocent people. Consequently, Marx’s writings are an apology for crime.

Furthermore, he advocated for the dictatorship of the proletariat (as opposed to a democracy representing all people), the theft of private property (as opposed to the protection of honestly acquired property), and imposition and authoritarianism (as opposed to individual liberty). In fact, he praised the Taiping Revolution that took place in China during his time, a revolution that was both communist and Christian, promising a paradise on earth but ultimately resulting in an unbearable despotism where very different standards were applied to leaders compared to the majority of the subjugated.

Read LIVING WITHOUT HARMING: Let us respect the freedom of others

Read DO NOT STEAL! Neither directly nor indirectly

Another injustice preached by Marx is the theft of profit from entrepreneurs, which is akin to taking wages from workers, rental income from landlords, or fees from a professional for services rendered. So many hours of study in the central library of London to make claims that defy elementary logic: that the surplus value (the profit or profit margin) of capitalists (entrepreneurs) is a theft from the workers, to whom it should belong.

This is absurd, as if someone invests their money in a company, they are entitled to the profit it generates, because the company belongs to them and not to the employees. If the right to that profit is taken away, what would be the point of creating companies and investing or reinvesting in them? If establishing a company only brings disadvantages (investing your savings and assuming risks but gaining nothing, aside from the stress, effort, and worry suffered to make the company work, etc.) but no advantages, who is going to create and maintain companies? What sense would it make to cultivate wheat if the grain were taken from you after the harvest?

He did not only preach theft, but also unjust hatred toward the entrepreneur and the owner. The basis of this hatred is the defamatory idea that the capitalist profits at the expense of the worker and exploits them. The successful entrepreneur does profit (and as that profit is normally saved and reinvested, their wealth tends to increase), but as a result of creating a company and managing it well. To do this, they require exchange relationships with employees, suppliers, and customers—relationships in which everyone wins and therefore freely enters into them. They are based on give-and-take rather than the plunder of others’ property, contrary to what Marx proposes.

Furthermore, the profit margin obtained by most entrepreneurs (both today and in the 19th century) is tight due to the competition present in most markets; anyone attempting to increase their margin beyond what is reasonable is quickly priced out of the market and forced to close. If they do so by raising prices, they lose customers, and if they try by reducing costs, they lose suppliers and workers. Only monopolistic or oligopolistic companies can obtain large margins while paying their employees adjusted wages. It seems surprising that Marx, who processed so much data and statistics, did not convey these basic market realities of competition in his books, whether in the 14th or the 21st century.

It is not that most entrepreneurs are angels, but if they are not, it is not because they are entrepreneurs, but because they are homo sapiens—a species with a marked abusive tendency carried in its DNA. However, abusiveness among entrepreneurs and especially startups is likely lower than in the human race as a whole, as they have a modus operandi oriented toward obtaining wealth by generating it (through work, savings, investment, entrepreneurship, innovation, training, and offering products and services with a good price-quality ratio, etc.), unlike those whose modus operandi is oriented toward obtaining wealth by taking it from others.

DO NOT STEAL!: Let us generate wealth honestly

HOW TO LIVE WITHOUT HARMING? Let us combat the perverse narcissism we all possess

FOR A WORLD WITHOUT HARM: Let us recognize the evil that runs through our veins

For this reason, the capitalist system oriented toward wealth creation is much more honest (despite the undeniable abuses that take place within it) than most systems that have existed in history, such as Neolithic chiefdoms that attacked each other to steal land and women, or subsequent slave systems, feudal systems, Old Regime monarchies, imperialist states, and, to a lesser extent, communist ones. All of these are typically based on the law of the strongest, on the subjugation and exploitation of the weak by bullies and the powerful, as well as oppressors and violators of human rights. Moreover, the capitalist system (at least the moderate version) is one of the few that does not exploit, as it is one of the few in which labor relations are freely consented to on a win-win basis where everyone gains: you provide me a service and in exchange I give you a salary, generally under market conditions. In capitalism, material goods are purchased, unlike the aforementioned systems where they are primarily seized through violence.

Marx already made use of defamation, manipulation, and lies, so characteristic of extreme left-wing regimes (as well as extreme right-wing ones, like Goebbels in Nazi Germany), unjustly fostering hatred of the bourgeoisie in the same way that Hitler and Mussolini did with Jews, causing great suffering to many innocent victims. And I am not only talking about murders and atrocities against the upper class, but above all against millions of middle-class people and ordinary peasants (not large landowners) who cultivated their own piece of land, of which they were repugnant owners (small proprietors). Like any good villain, Marx also had his scapegoats.

Marx’s characteristic manipulation is reflected in the slogan he and his followers have repeated so often: “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.” It is the world turned upside down, because in the increasingly free capitalist countries where Marx lived (Germany, France, Belgium, and Great Britain), workers had a growing freedom that allowed them, among other things, to change companies if they did not like where they worked, set up their own workshop or shop if they did not want to work for others, or emigrate to another country if they did not like where they lived. In fact, millions went to America, where they were given considerable tracts of land, achieving a certain prosperity and independence. Precisely those freedoms of the proletarians were abolished by the various “dictatorships of the proletariat” preached by Marx, binding them with chains instead of removing them.

As if all the above were not enough, Marx and Engels also initiated the double standards so typical of all communist systems and the like. While Marx criticized the bourgeoisie and turned them into a scapegoat for all the ills of the proletariat, both Marx and Engels lived as bourgeois as soon as their income allowed. For years, Marx had no choice but to survive as a proletarian in London’s Soho, a poor neighborhood at the time. In fact, some of his children died due to a lack of medical attention, because Marx prioritized his political-intellectual ambitions over his responsibilities as a father. However, when he received money from Engels and an inheritance, he quickly moved to a comfortable house in an elegant London neighborhood, where he maintained a bourgeois lifestyle. Engels did the same, rubbing shoulders with German aristocrats residing in Manchester.

They laid the foundations for the typical communist hypocrisy of preaching equality while living in an unequal and privileged manner when possible. Thus began the classic Communist Law of the Funnel: wide for its leaders and narrow for the people. It has been applied time and again by all or most high and middle-ranking officials of all communist regimes and the like, such as the Ceaușescu mansion, which can be visited in Bucharest, or the Sandinista guerrillas in Nicaragua, who expropriated properties only to immediately put them in their own private names.

Or, much closer in space and time, we have Pablo Iglesias and Irene Montero, who preach equality but did not renounce their salaries—enormously unequal compared to those of the working class—and bought the mansion that almost everyone in Spain knows about. Or Yolanda Díaz, another preacher of equality who has not renounced her unequal super-salary nor the 443 m2 penthouse in the privileged Retiro neighborhood of Madrid that she is entitled to as Minister of Labor. She could have renounced it to live in a 50 m2 flat in Getafe or Fuenlabrada to live like the working class she supposedly defends, but the actual modus operandi of most communist or similar leaders is what it is.

Another hypocrisy of Marx, inherited by some of his followers, was to call bourgeois employers exploiters, even though their relationships with their workers were freely consented to and mutually beneficial, as they paid them a salary. Marx, on the other hand, never paid his maid Helene Demuth anything. And this was not only when he was poor and lived in Soho, but also when he lived as a wealthy bourgeois. This pattern would be copied by great communist leaders like Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot, who turned the bulk of the population into state serfs, much worse paid and with a much lower standard of living (including millions in slavery and also millions of people without the basics to survive, literally starving to death) than in liberal capitalist democracies.

Despite all this, this ideologue continues to have tens of millions of followers worldwide.

Help them open their eyes!

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