The Communist Manifesto wasn’t really a manifesto. If I got to title it instead of Marx, I would call it “Critique of Pure Capital”. That’s what Marxism is–the words of a smart critic of capitalism suggesting why and how it might fall apart someday. Modern-day Marxists take it upon themselves to try to figure out how to speed that process along.

I wish them well, even the flake-ass Marxists like Caleb Maupin and Jackson Hinkle, because I believe capitalism is a core evil in this world, one that makes a sick fucking joke out of better ideas, like actual democracy.

But it has always seemed a little goofy to me to label oneself as a Marx + ist. Like … it would be facile enough, to base your worldview on a good movie, like On The Beach, or even a bad one like The Wolf of Wall Street. But to base your worldview on a critical review of that movie? It’s hard to take you too seriously.

Marxism’s ideas about techniques for getting rid of capitalism are all well and good. But it is regrettably thin on what to replace it with, and if we look honestly at how those thin ideas have worked out in practice, we’ve got to account for Stalin’s crimes somehow, and … Mao’s for that matter … Right? Shit ain’t pretty, maybe at certain times and places even uglier than the many horrifying crimes of the white western criminals.

Anarchy is far more practical. You can laugh at that if you want, but at least read about it with an open and serious mind before you cackle.