Saturday 5th May marked the 200th year anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx, one of the world’s most influential philosophers and political theorists.

In light of this bicentenary several prominent outlets and figures have made a point of paying homage to the man. The New York Times ran an op-ed earlier that week by philosophy professor Jason Barker, celebrating Marx and his ideology. It triumphantly ran the title “Happy Birthday, Karl Marx. You Were Right!” Meanwhile the Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell spoke at an event commemorating the German philosopher, stating that Marx is a major influence within the Labour Party.

It’s not just academics and politicians that are enamoured by Marx. The radio station LBC noted over the weekend that approximately 49% of British people find Marxism appealing:

And from my own experience, on several occasions I’ve heard ordinary people state confidently that, “Communism works in theory.”

All of this should be very concerning to anyone who has studied the history of the 20thcentury.

In economic terms, communism has failed catastrophically. Every nation that adopted it either came to economic ruin or was forced to evolve. The first host society of Marx’s ideas was the Soviet Union and ultimately it collapsed from the struggle of trying to maintain this ideology. The USSR was undoubtedly a superpower during the Cold War but the quality of life for its citizens was a fraction of that compared to the standards of the capitalist West.

Furthermore, it never produced any consumer products that were widely sought after in other countries (with the exception maybe of weapons). It’s important to note that a significant portion of the USSR’s early industry was carried out by Gulag prisoners in what was essentially slave labour. Journalist Anne Applebaum recounts in her book Gulag that during the 1950s the camps “produced a third of the country’s gold, much of its coal and timber, and a great deal of almost everything else.” This enslaved workforce undoubtedly in part helped the Soviet Union keep up with the West.

While China is still officially a communist state, in reality it’s authoritarian capitalist. It loosened centralised control of economic activity in order to facilitate industrial growth and attract foreign investment, but ultimately the government gets the final say on business matters. The foundational Marxist doctrine has been gradually redefined for economic expediency. It’s a similar story in Vietnam; it allows certain capitalist aspects to the economy but the state is still firmly in control.

The only nations left that still truly cling to the philosophy of Marx are Cuba and North Korea – hardly industrial or technological powerhouses.  This picture speaks a thousand words:

Satellite image of North Korea and South Korea at night

It’s also worth mentioning Venezuela. While the Venezuelan government has never officially described itself as fully communist or Marxist, it did adopt a hardline socialist economic model. So how’s that turning out? Well, last year it was reported that people were breaking into zoos to steal and eat the animals because of food shortages and currently inflation is at 18 thousand percent, with experts predicting it to keep rising.

So just from a practical point of view, it’s clear that Marxism is simply unsustainable. Amongst a host of problems arguably the main fault is this: when there’s no incentive to work beyond the threat of punishment, the economy will inevitably stagnate. Hence the expression from the Soviet days, “They pretend to pay us so we pretend to work.” The economist FA Hayek pointed out that one of the other major faults undermining Marxist theory, specifically the notion of a centrally planned economy, is that economies are too complicated for any administration to effectively strategize.

When it comes to allocating resources, “these decisions cannot be deduced from formal principles, or settled for long periods in advance. They depend inevitably on the circumstances of the moment, and in making such decisions it will always be necessary to balance one against the other the interests of various persons and groups” (Hayek, The Road to Serfdom).

There was also a human cost to the Marxist system. The consequences of this doctrine led to the deaths of roughly 100 million people and an immeasurable amount of suffering for countless others. Everywhere communism was implemented there was human rights abuses on a jaw-dropping scale. The concentration of unaccountable political power, the ever present justification of “in the name of the people” and putting the good of an abstract collective over individual freedom, all inevitably led to some of the worst civilizational disasters in history. In the Soviet Union alone, it’s estimated that between 20 and 30 million Russians were murdered by the communist regime.

The most notorious atrocities include Lenin’s Red Terror, Stalin’s purges, the Gulag prison system, mass starvation due to farm collectivisation and the Soviet authorities’ cruelty towards their own citizens and mismanagement of the war effort whilst fighting the Nazis. This is not to mention the four million Ukrainians who died in 1932/33 due to a deliberately manufactured famine (Known as the ‘Holodomor’), the murder of 21 thousand Polish political elites following the joint Nazi-Soviet annexing of Poland, and the crushing of the 1956 Hungarian uprising.

The devastation was even worst in Maoist China. As a result of Chairman Mao’s (euphemistically titled) ‘Great Leap Forward’ it’s estimated that 40 million people died due to starvation. Similarly the ‘Cultural Revolution’ led to millions more being killed, imprisoned, tortured and exiled. Many others suffered beatings, intimidation and public humiliations. All of this violence and coercion was carried out due to paranoia over bourgeois-capitalist elements allegedly infiltrating Chinese society. It was also a means for Mao to consolidate power after his previous disastrous policies weakened his standing in the party. Even today the Chinese government still has a grim human rights record and goes to great lengths to censor any speech it deems a threat to its authority.

Repressionand tyranny are features of many of the other Marxist and extreme socialist nations in the world today. Cuba has been an authoritarian one party state since the communist takeover and Venezuela is descending into complete chaos. Political opposition and human rights are also repressed in Vietnam.

However in terms of despotism, no Marxist nation, or any nation for that matter, comes close to the Orwellian nightmare of North Korea. It’s an overused comparison but there really is no better description of this country than the famous dystopian novel 1984.The level of control this state has over its citizens, both physically and psychologically is terrifying and there is the long established history of systematic terror and oppression.

In recent years there have been some modest improvements but the country is still basically the world’s biggest open-air prison. Again, this regime would likely not exist if it weren’t for the ideas of Marx. Granted there are differences between the ideology of Marxism and the ideology of the North Korean regime (specifically the DPRK also has a racialist worldview, seeing themselves as a master race) but the core collectivist dogma remains.

What’s important to notice here is that in every society that embraced Marxism, regardless of cultural or historical differences, almost the exact same events unfolded; famines, secret police, economic devastation, concentration camps, poverty, mass killings and an overall devaluation of life and liberty. This is a strong counter to the claim that the social and economic carnage in these nations was solely the responsibility of the leaders’ malevolent character or incompetence and nothing to do with the doctrine they espoused.

The very clear pattern of large-scale violence, brutality and failure should alert any reasonable person that there are major flaws in the theory. Even if someone doesn’t accept this criticism then they at least have to account for why it seems that the most ruthless, cruel and misanthropic individuals always rise to the top in Marxist political systems. Hayek detailed this trend in his work The Road to Serfdom, saying that in collectivist dictatorships there will always be “special opportunities for the ruthless and unscrupulous.”

There’s a sad irony in all of this since Marxism claims to only have compassion for the oppressed and simply wants to make the world “fair”. In regards to trying to make everyone completely equal, the futility of this goal was summed up perfectly by Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn: “Human beings are born with different capabilities, if they are free, they are not equal. If they are equal, they are not free.”

There is nothing to celebrate on the birthday of Karl Marx. If anything it should be made as a memorial day to the many victims of his ideology. Furthermore it should be a day to meditate on what factors led to the rise of this philosophy in various regions of the world and what can be done to challenge it.