Despite Communism’s death toll of nearly 100 million people, human civilization nearly coming to the brink of annihilation resulting from the Cold War, and the millions of people still living in destitute conditions in Communist states (like Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela), The New York Times has seen it fit to spit in the faces and on the graves of Communism’s victims. The Grey Lady commemorated Karl Marx’s birthday by publishing an op-ed written by associate professor of philosophy Jason Baker who states Karl Marx was right.

However, one intrepid blogger who thoroughly read Karl Marx has uncovered quotes by him that should give even the most hard-core Marxist pause. As it turns out, Marx was a supporter of slavery and terrorism:

As for slavery, there is no need for me to speak of its bad aspects. The only thing requiring explanation is the good side of slavery. I do not mean indirect slavery, the slavery of proletariat; I mean direct slavery, the slavery of the Blacks in Surinam, in Brazil, in the southern regions of North America. Direct slavery is as much the pivot upon which our present-day industrialism turns as are machinery, credit, etc. … Slavery is therefore an economic category of paramount importance. ~ Karl Marx (Letter to Pavel Vasilyevich Annenkov, December 28, 1846)

… the very cannibalism of the counterrevolution will convince the nations that there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror. ~ Karl Marx (“The Victory of the Counter-Revolution in Vienna,” Neue Rheinische Zeitung, November 7, 1848)

All the other large and small nationalities and peoples are destined to perish before long in the revolutionary world storm… these residual fragments of peoples always become fanatical standard-bearers of counter-revolution and remain so until their complete extirpation or loss of their national character… [A general war will] wipe out all these petty hidebound nations, down to their very names. The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward. ~ Friedrich Engels (“The Magyar Struggle,” Neue Rheinische Zeitung, January 13, 1849)

… only by the most determined use of terror against these Slav peoples can we [Germans], jointly with the Poles and Magyars, safeguard the revolution… there will be a struggle, an ‘inexorable life-and-death struggle,’ against those Slavs who betray the revolution; an annihilating fight and ruthless terror – not in the interests of Germany, but in the interests of the revolution! ~ Friedrich Engels (“Democratic Pan-Slavism, Cont.,” Neue Rheinische Zeitung, February 16, 1849)

We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror. ~ Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (“Suppression of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung,” Neue Rheinische Zeitung, May 19, 1849)

Marxism or Communism is the fullest expression of the Left’s philosophy as first expressed by the Left’s founding father Jean Jacques Rousseau in which his ideas became the inspiration for France’s Reign of Terror.

Environmentalism is in the Marxist tradition and while the death toll resulting from their efforts is not fully known, the efforts of environmentalist groups, like Greenpeace and PETA, are such that it would, most likely, come pretty close to Communism’s.

Regardless of the body count, the deaths of people or their lives being ruined at the hands of ideologues (Communist or otherwise) seeking power above all else needs to be a reminder to never repeat those same mistakes.