Another Urban Myth At The Trib

From today's Midweek Briefing:

The folks at Human Events, a conservative newspaper, have been running a series of "365 ways to drive a liberal crazy." They're culled from James Delingpole's book of the same name. No. 164: "Quote liberal hero Karl Marx: 'There is only one way to kill capitalism -- by taxes, taxes, and more taxes.'" Sadly, liberals still won't get it.

To begin with, I can't see how Karl Marx is much of a liberal hero. Socialist hero, sure. Communist hero, definitely. But liberal hero? Only if you equate those three very different terms. But I guess in the collective hive-mind that is the Scaife braintrust (and remember they also believe climate change to be a hoax) anything to the right of Scaife himself is a radical Marxist. So this one's iffy at best.

But what of that quotation of Marx?

According to the Irregular Times, MARX NEVER SAID IT:

Anybody who’s actually read Karl Marx knows that Karl Marx would never have written those words. Marx saw taxes as connected to state power, and he held a dubious opinion of state power throughout history, up to and including the modern form of the democratic republic. Marx favored the smashing of the bourgeois state, not its engorgement through taxation.

But why believe the Irregular Times? I've never seen the site before. It could be the rantings of a paranoid schizophrenic for all I know.

They do include a link to the Marx & Engels archive - pretty sharp for a schizophrenic, if you ask me.

There's a search engine attached to the archive so you can look to see if Marx actually said what Scaife's braintrust said it said. And so, when I search for the exact phrase "kill capitalism" I get nothing, bupkis, nada, the null set. In short, it ain't in there.

But what does Marx say about taxes? The Irregular Times furnishes us with something Marx did say:

It is high treason to pay taxes. Refusal to pay taxes is the primary duty of the citizen!

So next time you meet a Tea Partier (or Sovereign Citizen, or Grover Norquist acolyte or any other right wing anti-tax zealot) just tell them that when they demand lower taxes in order to starve the guv'ment they're actually quoting Karl Marx.

That'll drive them crazy.