Readers React: What has communism done for us lately — besides kill and enslave millions of people?

To the editor: Life sometimes imitates art. It sure did in Mary Gabriel’s op-ed article, “A letter to Karl Marx on his 200th birthday.”

Gabriel writes, “Don’t get me wrong. The initial benefits of capitalism were tremendous.” This reminds me of the wonderful Monty Python scene with the memorable line, “Other than that, what have the Romans done for us?”

All liberal democracy and capitalism have done is raise millions of people out of poverty, reduce worldwide conflict, put men on the moon, invent everything from airplanes to iPhones and create the amazing healthcare advances that allow us to live long lives. All Marx’s ideas have done is kill, maim and enslave hundreds of millions of people.

From Mao Tse-tung to Pol Pot, Josef Stalin to Nicolae Ceaușescu, every time communism was tried, the result was the same. And if we try it in the United States, the results will be the same again.

James King, Kingwood, Texas

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To the editor: Thanks to Gabriel for her refreshing update on the status of capital 200 years after Marx’s birth.

The one good thing about our president is that he is clearly exposing the ugly greed that follows unrestrained capitalism and is helping to make socialism an acceptable word to young people.

When the richest 1% owns half the world’s wealth, when the largest corporations find ways to avoid paying taxes on record profits and when 5,000 of the 58,000 homeless people in Los Angeles are children, you know Marx was on to something.

Mark Santarelli, Los Angeles

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To the editor: Gabriel states that the benefits of capitalism were tremendous up to about 40 years ago.

Actually, in the last 40 years, the spread of capitalism, particularly in China, has cut the global poverty rate in half. Despite its flaws, there is no greater force for improving the life of the ordinary person than free-market capitalism.

Rudy Alvarez, Pacific Palisades

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To the editor: Gabriel’s very intentional whitewash of Marx’s philosophy is a hallmark of the propaganda that permeates communist governments.

Gabriel fails to mention any of the 10 planks of Marx’s “Communist Manifesto,” including its central tenet of the abolition of private property, the centralization of credit in the government and the “more equitable distribution of the population over the country.” All these planks were adopted in some form by communist governments, but none more so than by the Khmer Rouge, which banned banks and forced millions to move to the countryside and reeducation camps.

The “democracy” that Marx favored was one that resulted in his goal of the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Marx knew that people would not readily relinquish the freedoms and liberties that come with the right to own property, and favored the use of force and by “means of despotic inroads” to accomplish his goals.

Ira Kharasch, Santa Monica

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