Richard Owen - October 22, 2009

Karl Marx, who famously described religion as “the opium of the people”, has joined Galileo, Charles Darwin and Oscar Wilde on a growing list of historical figures to have undergone an unlikely reappraisal by the Roman Catholic Church.

L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, said yesterday that Marx’s early critiques of capitalism had highlighted the “social alienation” felt by the “large part of humanity” that remained excluded, even now, from economic and political decision-making.

Georg Sans, a German-born professor of the history of contemporary philosophy at the pontifical Gregorian University, wrote in an article that Marx’s work remained especially relevant today as mankind was seeking “a new harmony” between its needs and the natural environment. He also said that Marx’s theories may help to explain the enduring issue of income inequality within capitalist societies.

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The Midnight Sun - October 21st, 2008

“The American crash is a delight to behold, and it’s far from over.”

Karl Marx to Frederick Engels, 1857

Reports that Marx’s Das Kapital are literally ‘flying off the shelves’ in a bookshop in once Communist controlled Berlin have delighted and fired up journalists all over the world. Check out the links here.

Karl Marx, now a pile of bones in a hole in the ground, or a tortured spirit in an afterlife somewhere, is entirely unaware that his failed ideology is enjoying a renaissance of sorts amongst a generation that only knows that ideology from the romanticized writings of those who never had to live under it. The most unashamed leftist doctrinaire media sources, the Times, BBC and ABC are gloating. For these are the corridors where closet and not-so-closet Marxists have lurked since their big heyday in the mid twentieth century.

Is Germany, gloating over the distress of America, so quick to rush out and embrace the ideology of her arch enemy?

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Martin Masse - September 29, 2008

Marx’s Proposal Number Five seems to be the leading motivation for those backing the Wall Street bailout

In his Communist Manifesto, published in 1848, Karl Marx proposed 10 measures to be implemented after the proletariat takes power, with the aim of centralizing all instruments of production in the hands of the state. Proposal Number Five was to bring about the “centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.”

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