Why Radical Marxists Should Join the Tea Party

Karl Marx casts an outsized shadow over this year's midterm elections.  If you listen to the news media these days, particularly the crazy stuff on AM radio or anything that comes out of the mouth of the likes of Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell, you'll be led to believe that Marxists are everywhere.  They are in the highest levels of government (particularly the White House), but also in the schools, in the media, an especially in academia.  Heck, Marxists could be your neighbor, your kids could be Marxists, maybe your priest is a Marxist.  Man, your kid goes to college and comes back a Marxist. You know, the Soviets had a 100-year plan to plant Marxists in all levels of American society so they could be anywhere.  Well those may be the dumb Marxists that haven't really read Marx, like Barack Obama.  If I were a Radical Marxist, I'd join the Tea Party.  How is that possible you say?  Well, it's really quite simple.  Marxists believe that the people can only become really radicalized when all of the illusions of capitalism are stripped away, when capitalism is at its most pure.  Who better than to purify capitalism than the Tea Party?  After all, they want to take away everything that makes capitalism bearable to masses, like pensions, health care, education funding, infrastructure programs, a minimum wage, unions, and all the barriers to pure market competition.  A true radical Marxist would love to join such a program, for the masses of workers will only realize the futility of their condition and rebel when they have nothing left to fall back on.  A real radical Marxist would certainly not join the Democratic Party (or even the pre-Tea Republican Party).  The Democrats want to just muddle through, trying to maintain the basics of capitalism and the free market while giving the people the crumbs in order to keep them happy.  The Tea Party is the best hope for radicalism in America today.  The Tea Party is against the bank bailouts, the automaker bailouts, the stimulus, the health care plan.  Radical Marxists would also be against all of the above, since they only serve to keep the capitalist system on life support through its recurring crises, Marxism can only be realized in crisis.  When the government stops artificially propping up the system, it will come crashing down, and radicalism can then be realized.  Radical Marxists do not want half-measures like stimuluses and health care bills that simply provide opium to the masses, they want full-scale revolution.  This can only be achieved when capitalism is stripped of its illusions.  So Marxists would view the Tea Party as a way to hasten the revolution.

If all this seems absurd to you, it is no more absurd that calling every Tom, Dick, and Harry in American politics a Marxist.  Here's a good rule of thumb, if you are going to credibly label someone as a follower of a 19th century philosopher, be sure you have read and understand the works of said philosopher, otherwise you sound like a jack-ass.