What did Karl Marx have in common with the philosophers of the enlightenment?
Marx offers the world a stateless society by way of a gargantuan state created to implement his ideas and then some how obediently go away. It’s hard to see enlightenment in a man who actually believes you can create an oppressive state that will gladly go away once everyone has been granted the form of equality Marx offers. Its hard to see the enlightenment in the idea that people must be oppressed before they can be truly free. What Marx offers is a from of “legal plunder”. Plunder is plunder no matter what the cause, the means do not justify the end, and if big wig capitalists plunder they are plunderers and if governments engage in wealth redistribution then they too are plunderers. If Marx was a fan of freedom at all it is freedom by way of subjection which isn’t freedom at all. It is sad that while Adam Smith is dismissed as naive for his assertion that an “unseen hand” will guide the market place while this man Karl Marx is linked to the Age of Enlightenment brought to us by thi
