In a recent tweet, Teen Vogue hailed Karl Marx, author of The Communist Manifesto, by telling its impressionable, young audience, “welcome to marx!” and sharing a link to an article published in 2018.
Teen Vogue is a digital magazine aimed at selling sex, sexual fetishes, communism and other radical ideologies to teenagers across the country and the world. Much of the content is disturbing and unsuitable for the magazine’s supposed age demographic, but it’s especially concerning how the editors continue pushing this pro-Marixist agenda to influence young readers.
In a glowing pro-Marxist article, Teen Vogue leans on a high school teacher and college professor to extol the virtues of communism, while utterly ignoring the death and torture of millions and millions of men, women and children.
The article begins by introducing Marx, claiming that his socialist philosophy “advocates for workers’ control over their labor (instead of their bosses).” It’s a grossly simplistic description.
An article from Stanford University gives a more thorough definition, “They desired to end capitalism feeling that it was the social class system that led to the exploitation of workers. The workers that were exploited would develop class consciousness. Then there would be a fundamental process of class conflict that would be resolved through revolutionary struggle. In this conflict, the proletariat will rise up against the bourgeoisie and establish a communist society. Marx and Friedrich Engels (Marx’s co-author) thought of the proletariat as the individuals with labor power, and the bourgeoisie as those who own the means of production in a capitalist society. The state would pass through a phase, often thought of as a socialism, and eventually settle finally on a pure communist society. In a communist society, all private ownership would be abolished, and the means of production would belong to the entire community. In the communist movement, a popular slogan stated that everyone gave according to their abilities and received according to their needs. Thus, the needs of a society would be put above and beyond the specific needs of an individual.”
It never worked out that way, but don’t tell Teen Vogue.
The magazine leans on public high school history teacher Mark Brunt to erase the sins of the past and put communism in a more positive light. He said, “I do a little role-playing with [my class],” Brut told Teen Vogue. “[I tell them,] I’m the boss, you’re my workers, and you want to try to take me down. I have the money. I own the factory. I control the police. I control the military. I control the government. What do you guys have?”
In today’s political climate, it’s easy to see how that perspective could appeal to young people frustrated with the current situation. That ideal is never what happens in reality.
In communism, the people own nothing. The government, and a few select people in leadership positions, are the ones who own and control everything, including the military, police, the courts and often food as well (as in cases of collectivized farming). Nations that embrace communism usually lose whatever meagre freedoms they had.
According to the Library of Congress, “Stalin’s aims (in the early years of the Soviet Union) were to erase all traces of the capitalism that had entered under the New Economic Policy and to transform the Soviet Union as quickly as possible, without regard to cost (or human life), into an industrialized and completely socialist state.”
Those who tried to resist this change were sent to the Gulags in Siberia, while the rest of the peasants were forced into state-controlled collectivized farms. The result was years of famine, which was especially horrific in Ukraine where about 4 million people died. The situation was so terrible that some even resorted to cannibalism.
Needless to say, the entire Soviet experiment was an absolute disaster.
China tried the same thing when communism was first introduced—it was called The Great Leap Forward. Though the true death toll will likely never be known, it’s estimated that around 30 or so million people died in this effort.
The efforts to introduce socialism and communism in countries like Venezuela, Cuba, Cambodia and others also resulted in mass casualties, oppression and sometimes genocide.
Communism is not about equality or freedom, it’s about death, destruction and the enslavement of people under the tyrannical rule of a paranoid madman. The idea that Teen Vogue and some American teachers are encouraging young people to embrace this deeply flawed and corrupt system is concerning.
As the contentious political climate continues, there may be more calls for the country to adopt socialism. No political or economic system or society is perfect, but it’s lie that socialism or communism is the answer.
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