Millennial Marxists: The New Class

The Republic's Phil Boas probably doesn't need me to defend him against accusations of "intellectually laziness" by a defender of "Millennial Marxists."  However, young Marxists and their supporters really do need to read more.  Start with Milovan Dilas's The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System.   Dilas was Marshal Tito's right hand  man until Dilas became disenchanted with Communism.  Dilas was appalled by Communist rulers who were installing themselves as the new privileged class instead of delivering economic equality and socialist democracy they promised the people.  George Orwell, another disillusioned Marxist, explored some of the same themes in his famous works Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.   The prescient insight of Orwell and Dilas is astonishing when we examine the state of Communism today.  Far from delivering political and economic democracy, the remaining Communists states, e.g., China and Vietnam, are ruled by self-perpetuating (nepotism) political elites who control all the state's wealth and power.

The charge by defenders of "Millennial Marxists" that capitalism is responsible for all the world's wars and troubles is particularly galling.   Not only did Mr. Boas neglect the carnage inflicted by Mao, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh and Giap, but he did not explore Stalin's role in starting World War II.  It was Stalin after all who allied with Hitler to invade and divide Catholic Poland between them.  Moreover, though Marxist historians are quick to blame Roosevelt and the Pope for not doing enough to stop the Holocaust, no Marxist is interested in examining how very close the Red Army was to liberating Auschwitz and Warsaw in 1944 when Stalin called of his offensive so that the Germans could finish off the troublesome Poles and Jews for him.

Intellectual laziness isn't the problem here.  The problem is egregious intellectual dishonesty.