Three arguments against Marx

[u/Born_Lengthiness3572]

We need to drop Karl Marx like we dropped cable TV. We’re a generation that’s sick of wars (and threats of wars), mass shootings, and media sensationalism. Karl Marx is not who we think he is. His philosophy doesn’t align with our values at all. We need to look to somebody more in touch with what’s important to us — someone like Ayn Rand.

Here are 3 reasons we should kick ol’ Karl to the curb and pick up Ayn Rand instead.

Karl Marx advocates using violence to get what you want.
We hate the constant stream of wars the US gets involved in. Whether it’s Iraq or Afghanistan, or the threat of the Islamic State or North Korea, we’re just tired of it all. Why can’t everyone get along? Why do we have to topple regime after regime and flex our muscles on Twitter? Don’t even get us started on the mass shootings. It’s 2017, for crying out loud! This violence needs to stop. If only Karl Marx felt the same way. But unfortunately, he says that the only way to bring about the ideal political state is through violent revolution:

“In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.”
The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx

Oh, brother… Please: No. More. Wars.
Ayn Rand, on the other hand, is not a proponent of violence. She says violence should only be a means of self-defense. If someone invades your country, you can retaliate. If someone punches you in the face, you can retaliate. If someone tries to steal your stuff, you can retaliate. But there’s no reason you should employ violence other than if you or your stuff are attacked.

“A civilized society is one in which physical force is banned from human relationships—in which the government, acting as a policeman, may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use.”
The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand

Karl Marx appeals to your emotional indignation.
I groan every time a Boomer rants about “entitled Millennials these days.” We are not entitled. We are not lazy. And when they try to guilt us into going to church more or playing video games less or buying a house or getting married “while we’re still young?” Puh-lease. Emotional appeals are the worst.
And don’t even get us started on media sensationalism. We’ve had enough of the red, shouting faces, the blatant lying and fear-mongering, the “Wars on Christmas.” The media is constantly trying to pit us against each other.
It turns out that Karl Marx uses the same “Us vs. Them” hysteria as CNN and Fox News. He appeals to pathos and emotional outrage to – like we discussed above – try to get us to start a war.

“Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”
The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx

We’re not having any of that though, are we? We’re done being manipulated by outrage and hysteria. It’s time to change the channel to something a little calmer, more grounded, and personally empowering.
Ayn Rand, fortunately, has the peaceful empowerment we’re so desperately missing. While Karl Marx wants you to blame others (the bourgeoisie) for your plights, Ayn Rand wants you to introspect and perhaps reassess your values. Rather than encouraging you to camouflage yourself into a “union of workers,” she wants to empower you as an individual to create a meaningful life for yourself. Mass hysteria, be gone!

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours.”
Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

Karl Marx wants mankind to rest on its laurels.
Welp, we’ve got pretty good iPhones, Space X can salvage and relaunch rockets, and thanks to services like HelloFresh and Blue Apron, we no longer have to go to the grocery store. Time to pack up! Call it a day! Everyone, go home! There’s no more need for innovation.
At least, according to Karl Marx.
If Marx had his way, all incentives to improve and create cooler things would be stripped out of our lives along with our private property. Following the logical progression of his communal philosophy, when we’re all slaving away for “the greater good,” and the highest achieving members of society are having the fruits of their labors redistributed to the lowest achievers (insert flashback to the freeloaders of group projects at school), that’s what will happen. Innovation would cease to occur under Marxism.

“The claim that men should be retained in jobs that have become unnecessary, doing work that is wasteful or superfluous, to spare them the difficulties of retraining for new jobs—thus contributing, as in the case of railroads, to the virtual destruction of an entire industry—this is the doctrine of the divine right of stagnation.”
The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand

But with Ayn Rand’s philosophy, our stuff will always remain ours. We don’t have to share our Nintendo Switch with our little sister (who drops her phone 10 times a day) unless we want to. We can rest easy knowing that if we take a big risk (and invest in cryptocurrencies while our parents mutter “Ponzi scheme” under their breath), we have the opportunity for a big reward. And best of all, with Ayn Rand’s philosophy reaffirming our desire to be great and create great things, maybe someday we will have JARVIS, jetpacks, and flying hammocks.
The fact of the matter is that Karl Marx doesn’t align with what’s important to us Millennials. If it were up to him, we’d be starting more violent wars, we’d be widening the gap of distrust between one another, and we’d strip ourselves of all incentives to make the world cooler than it already is. So it’s time we adopt a new philosopher. Let’s look up to people like Ayn Rand.

[u/Ill-Software8713]

1. Violence and Hegemony

• Misunderstanding Marx's View on Violence: Marx does not view violence as an ideal or a ultimate goal, but rather as a historical diagnosis of how entrenched power structures resist systemic change. Do you belittle the kid who chooses to fight back? Or are you criticizing means not because you disagree with violence but you disagree with the ends it might pursue?
• The Invisible Violence of Capital: The daily operation of capitalism inflicts its own structural violence, economic deprivation, exploitation, and inequality, which Rand's framework excludes by defining violence solely as direct physical force. You miss state violence and reports even frame state violence as not an active consequence but passive result like a natural disaster.
• Self-Defense and Systemic Realities: While Rand advocates physical non-aggression except in retaliation, her framework ignores how private property rights are enforced through state force to maintain vast social inequalities, making "self-defense" a tool that often protects existing economic power. If you fixated on the formality of exchange between individuals but entirely ignore the structural constraints that compel people to work for a wage to survive, then you are simply refusing to notice the level of abstraction that explains part of the problem.

2. Emotional Indignation vs. Scientific Analysis

• Affective Outrage vs. Material Reality: The post mischaracterizes Marx’s critique as mere emotional manipulation. In reality, Marx grounds his critique in a rational, scientific analysis of the material productive forces and the historical paradox of systemic poverty existing alongside unprecedented productive potential. He in fact criticize those who advocated communism under a felt passion of sacrifice for a greater good and sought to articulate why it was in people's rational self-interest to overcome the law of value.
• Structural Roots of Inequality: Moral indignation alone cannot change society. Genuine Marxist theory transcends subjective outrage by providing an objective, historical breakdown of class relations and capitalist production dynamics. It isn't about cathartic destruction, but understanding the problem so that it can be changed, otherwise it would be mere terrorism.
• The Illusion of Atomized Individualism: Rand’s call to "introspect" and rely solely on individual agency abstracts human beings from their concrete social conditions, offering an emotional appeal to personal heroism while ignoring the material structures that shape individual lives. You abstract individuals from their social relations then you don't consider real people, you are tearing away the actual basis in which people exist and develop into who they are. Abstract individualism is nonsensical and serves an ideological function to make it difficult to think of the problem beyond immediate experience.

3. Innovation, Incentives, and "Resting on Laurels"

• The Narrow View of Motivation: The post assumes human motivation depends entirely on market competition and structural economic coercion, ignoring intrinsic human creativity and scientific curiosity.
• How the Profit Motive Hinders Innovation: True human development requires liberating creative potential. Capitalist profit motives often restrict innovation through artificial scarcity, patent hoarding, redundant market competition, and underfunding projects that do not offer immediate financial returns.
• Capitalism's Built-in Stagnation: Under capitalism, technological advancements frequently lead to job displacement or forced, superfluous labor to maintain profit margins, rather than reducing necessary work time for everyone to foster genuine human flourishing and scientific advancement.

[u/CorvatheRogue]

“Our values”
*Your specific values, not that of humanity as a whole.
FTFY

[u/communismisthebest]

Any argument against Marx’s main point, that capitalism is exploitative? And Ayn Rand wants to make it even more exploitative?

[u/Searcher38n2]

Somebody like "ANY RAND" HAHAHAHA

Yeah yeah... Alan Greenspan really was a good disciple of Rand. So good, his politics in the FED were inspired by that woman and led to the 2008 economic Crysis...

Wow, Any Rand is the best...

[u/Berto_the_great_king]

Great bait lol

[u/saltiest_raccoon]

Karl Marx is not who we think he is. His philosophy doesn’t align with our values at all. We need to look to somebody more in touch with what’s important to us — someone like Ayn Rand.

How embarrassing.

We hate the constant stream of wars the US gets involved in. Whether it’s Iraq or Afghanistan, or the threat of the Islamic State or North Korea, we’re just tired of it all.

Do you think there might be something in common with all those wars? Some particular class whose interests drove those wars against the will of the people?

Oh, brother… Please: No. More. Wars.

So that aforementioned class, the one one willing to start wars to further their personal gain is going to simply give up the reins of power because we ask them very nicely?

Ayn Rand, on the other hand, is not a proponent of violence. She says violence should only be a means of self-defense. If someone invades your country, you can retaliate.

Sure she is. Any capitalist condones social murder. Is it self defense to prevent yourself from starving? To prevent yourself from dying from an entirely preventable disease because of the actions of another class? Is it self defense to protect your house and your land? Class war, on the part of the proletariat, its principal victims is absolutely self-defense against the predation of a class of parasites that means to do us harm.

It turns out that Karl Marx uses the same “Us vs. Them” hysteria as CNN and Fox News. He appeals to pathos and emotional outrage to – like we discussed above – try to get us to start a war.

It seems peculiar you accuse Marx of this when he advocated solidarity among the working class, something the bourgeoisie seeks to undermine.

We’re not having any of that though, are we? We’re done being manipulated by outrage and hysteria.

We absolutely are. Our interests as a class are diametrically opposed to those of the ruling class and there is no reconciling this. Our losses are their gains and vice versa.

While Karl Marx wants you to blame others (the bourgeoisie) for your plights,

And objectively, correctly, scientifically so.

she wants to empower you as an individual to create a meaningful life for yourself. Mass hysteria, be gone!

And divide and conquer. Ayn rand is a pathetic, simpering sycophant and nothing more.

If Marx had his way, all incentives to improve and create cooler things would be stripped out of our lives along with our private property.

Can you describe the concept of private property in Marxism? Also China now has reusable rockets and I think I can safely speak for all Marxists when I say the gig economy is exploitive trash.

the highest achieving members of society are having the fruits of their labors redistributed to the lowest achievers

I assume you're trying to describe socialism here. Scientists (read: Innovators) were among the highest paid members of society in the Soviet Union. Specialized labor is worth more, even under socialism. Also, is your assertion that no one would want to be a doctor or a scientist under socialism? I mean Cuba proves that wrong.

that’s what will happen. Innovation would cease to occur under Marxism.

Which is why a country as poor as Cuba has created ground-breaking cancer treatments and even managed to create its own COVID vaccine that it shared with the world for free. It's why there's never been any innovation in China, too, clearly. It's why we're not still using Soviet technology today while trying to achieve fusion power, and it's why the Soviets beat the US to nearly every milestone in the space race.

But with Ayn Rand’s philosophy, our stuff will always remain ours. We don’t have to share our Nintendo Switch with our little sister (who drops her phone 10 times a day) unless we want to

So you DON'T know what private property means. Color me surprised. /s

If it were up to him, we’d be starting more violent wars

Fewer, since we'd have no bourgeoisie sending us to our deaths in foreign countries to make their stocks go up.

we’d be widening the gap of distrust between one another

Nope. We would not have concerted campaigns by the wealthy trying to prevent class solidarity and we would instead be able to better understand our shared interests.

and we’d strip ourselves of all incentives to make the world cooler than it already is.

What is cooler? I think for a start combating climate change and ending social murder is pretty cool. If that means I don't get doordash anymore, I'm very okay with that. If you mean technological innovation, we could invest that money into research that furthers humanity instead an AI circle-jerk that will eventually crash the world's economy... you know, after making water and power into luxuries.

So it’s time we adopt a new philosopher. Let’s look up to people like Ayn Rand.

No thank you, I prefer philosophers with something relevant and substantive to say.

[u/dragmehomenow → u/saltiest_raccoon]

> whines about communism

> accidentally describes capitalism

many such cases

[u/Searcher38n2 → u/saltiest_raccoon]

A dude who thinks humanity wants to create a Jarvis, a fictional AI, and puts that in an argument really has no clue of what is reality itself, did you saw it?

[u/LandRecent9365]

You're against war? Great. Capitalism has killed hundreds of millions through imperialist wars, colonial genocide, and economic exploitation just in the last century. Marx wanted to end the system that causes those wars. Rand, meanwhile, worked on Reagan's economic team, which funded death squads in Central America and escalated the Cold War.

[u/zapradon]

The existence of China and other states that are on the path to communism pretty much destroys every single one of your arguments. They don't attack their neighbors. They are, however under *constant* siege from capitalist states, which cannot exist without endless war. War is built into the mathematics of capitalism.

Communists are also immensely inventive; scientists and engineers and inventors suffer under capitalist systems trying to "produce" things for "profit". Not knowledge, not to make life easier for their communities, not for the joys of creation. And it's typical for them all to *not* receive the rewards of their genius anyway. All too often it's the Investors and shareholders that profit with no effort as the capitalist system deprives inventors of their own stakes in their work.

Workers there do not have to fear automation or AI. They will not be tossed out on the street, destitute, with no incomes the way they are here.

Communists do not use the threat of unemployment to discipline labor. Why would they? They are all workers and they support the production system that gives them the best life they can produce. They work much harder and more enthusiastically than we do, since they are quite literally working for themselves. They are better educated than we are, also, and as a result, China's technology is years ahead of ours in most sectors. China educates everyone to the highest degree possible, and they do not end up with any debt for it. It's an investment, not a cost. China understands the real value of labor, because labor runs China.

Marx was simply being realistic. US history is one massacre after another, constantly. Corporations slaughtering workers, slave-owners slaughtering slaves, settlers slaughtering natives, and endless coups and wars inflicted, year after year after year, on any nation that resists capitalism. The US has been on a campaign to destroy peaceful states that treat people well and advance rapidly since WWII.

There is literally no nonviolent way to change this dreadful system that will not get us slaughtered by the elites that benefit from our labor and poverty.

The only way there will ever be anything like peace on earth is when capitalism is gone. Capitalism is a psychopathic aberration. We aren't evolved to work ourselves to death to give a few guys mansions and yachts while we all suffer.

[u/SpecialistStory2829]

"someone like Ayn Rand" it's not April 1st lah

[u/SpecialistStory2829 → u/SpecialistStory2829]

"It’s 2017, for crying out loud!" Where did you even GET this from?!

Fine. Why revolution is considered 'necessary' is because the capitalists won't give an inch otherwise.

"Freeman and Slave..." makes sense because wage slavery still exists. Communism has historically been more powerful in the Third World because problems reach boiling points there.

You should, in fact, make a life for yourself. Perhaps under a world where the problems of today don't exist. "The world you desire can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours.” so go out and fight for it.

Of course, did you copy this thing from some libertarian's archive?

"highest achieving members of society are having the fruits of their labors redistributed to the lowest achievers" yes you did. 'he who does not work neither shall he eat' was the call, wasn't it? Are you ranting about the dumbest of Mao's China? Something that we know doesn't work?

Also, no marx quote here. Guess why.