I’m currently in Zürich, Switzerland, (says Dan Mitchell) where most shops are closed because “May Day” is an official holiday (thanks to Swiss federalism, the 26 cantons make such decisions rather than the central government).
As a fan of warm weather, I certainly don’t object to a celebration of springtime. But I have a hard time feeling festive because May 1 also has been hijacked by communists and socialists for “International Workers’ Day.” And the two holidays – unfortunately – have blurred together for some people.
Celebrating workers and seeking to boost their incomes is a worthwhile goal, of course, but communists and socialists shouldn’t be involved since their policies invariably result in lower living standards for ordinary people.
So I’m going to celebrate May Day by adding to my collection of anti-communism humor (see here, here, here, and here for other examples). For our first item, we’re going to mock the leftist claim that communism has never failed because various totalitarian regimes were not examples of “real communism.”
And some true believers hold to this laughable excuse until the bitter end.
Let’s briefly digress so I can make a serious point. A few days ago, I condemned the European Commission’s top bureaucrat for agreeing to take part in a celebration of Marx’s 200th birthday.
Well, the New York Times reminds us that it also belongs on the list of dupes and apologists by publishing a column lauding the supposed insights of Marx.
What precisely is Marx’s lasting contribution? Today the legacy would appear to be alive and well. …countless books have appeared, from scholarly works to popular biographies, broadly endorsing Marx’s reading of capitalism…
In 2002, the French philosopher Alain Badiou declared…that educated liberal opinion is today more or less unanimous in its agreement that Marx’s basic thesis — that capitalism is driven by a deeply divisive class struggle in which the ruling-class minority appropriates the surplus labor of the working-class majority as profit — is correct. …Racial and sexual oppression have been added to the dynamic of class exploitation. Social justice movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, owe something of an unspoken debt to Marx… The transition to a new society where relations among people, rather than capital relations, finally determine an individual’s worth is arguably proving to be quite a task. …But he does offer a powerful intellectual acid test for that change.
Amazing that someone could write such nonsense in 2018.
Now let’s return to the deliberate humor. Here are some parents who don’t realize they’re making a big mistake (though, as Chuck Asay humorously depicted, maybe we should blame the person who believes in myths as an adult).
For what it’s worth, I think the cartoon would have been even better if the guy was wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt.
I’ve saved the best for last. Or, to be more accurate, this final bit of humor is my favorite because it’s hard to find economics-oriented humor (hence my appreciation for this Wizard-of-Id parody).
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Reminds me of Cuba and North Korea (and Venezuela, though I don’t believe that awful regime has ever officially claimed to be Marxist).