Since I was once a Marxist, I have naturally considered whether Marx would have approved of the programme advocated by his present-day American followers. I cannot know, but based on my familiarity with the writings of the old guru, I can offer certain reflections.
Today’s Marxists regard every event as a question of oppressors and oppressed, and once they have identified the oppressed, there is nothing more to discuss.
Who the oppressors are varies from situation to situation. Normally, it is the rich, but it may also be homeowners, bodega owners, white people, men, the right, heterosexuals, supporters of law and order, opponents of unlimited immigration, the police, Christians, Jews, Zionists, ‘Islamophobes’ (i.e. people who take the Koran seriously), opponents of abortion up to the moment of birth, or those who do not like men participating in women’s sport or waving their genitals around in women’s changing rooms. The possibilities are endless.
Karl Marx would undoubtedly have supported most of this programme and approved of his present-day followers’ preoccupation with oppressors and oppressed.
He did not, however, hate white people. At any rate, he wrote nothing about it (he hated Jews). On the other hand, he had mixed views about ‘coloured’ peoples. He admired the American Plains Indians, whom he believed lived in a noble and primitive communist state of nature, but did not think highly of Indians, and he rejoiced that the British Empire was in the process of providing them with railways.
And since he was far from being contemptuous of sex and was by no means LGBTQ, he impregnated his maid, but had his ideological comrade-in-arms Friedrich Engels assume paternity, so that the father of communism could set down his thoughts undisturbed.
As regards the abolition of borders, the matter is more complicated. Marx supported Prussia and Austria in 1864, and despised ridiculous little Denmark. He therefore did not believe that Denmark should have the right to defend its border.
And he would, of course, have supported the American Democrats’ campaign for unrestricted immigration…
Marx has no answer as to what is to happen to the welfare state (which he described at the end of the ‘Communist Manifesto’) when countless millions have poured in and are queuing at the welfare office. Nor do his present-day followers.