Karl Marx on democracy

[snopes]

Comment: Did Karl Marx actually say this?

Democracy is a form of government that cannot long survive, for as soon as
the people learn that they have a voice in the fiscal policies of the
government, they will move to vote for themselves all the money in the
treasury and bankrupt the nation.

[Ellestar]

Doubt it.

Marx wasn't against democracy, as far as I can remember, but against capitalism. Plus, I think he's smart enough to realize that in a democracy, you need the majority of people to vote to give all of the money to individuals which goes against their self-interest in building up a society.

[Tarquin Farquart]

It's liberal democracy Marx is opposed to i.e. capitalism.

[BrianB]

Like that now-known-to-be-fake Karl Marx quote, virtually every reference to this quote as being from Marx I found were on Right-leaning websites. Also, the earliest reference to this quote as coming from Marx I could find was from this Denver Post blog post dated 4 March 2008. (I'll keep looking, though.)

And thanks to a very helpful website , I found that this quote has also been attributed to Scottish historian Alexander Fraser Tytler (or sometimes Tyler).

Brian

[BrianB]

Originally Posted by BrianB

Also, the earliest reference to this quote as coming from Marx I could find was from this Denver Post blog post dated 4 March 2008. (I'll keep looking, though.)

I found a reference to this quote as having come from Marx in this DemocraticUnderground.com forum post dated 21 January 2005. Interestingly, that was also the only reference I could find on a Left-leaning site. (Google found 10 pages of references on Right-leaning sites.) That post leads to a quotes page on an anti Scientology site. I also checked the Marxists.org search page but nothing turned up.
Brian

I can perhaps take us back to 1997 (or even 1994 -- seems there was an earlier edition of the possible source).

messianismequalstyranny.com/33to36.html gives the quote and cites 'Kershaw'.

messianismequalstyranny.com/bibliography.html lists

Kershaw, Peter
1997 Economic Solutions: The Incredible Story of How You and America
Are Being Bankrupted & What You Can Do to Avoid the Wipeout. Peter
Kershaw. Heal Our Land Ministries. Boulder, CO.

This is almost a proper citation. No page number is given, but the source is only 44 pages long, more of a pamphlet than a book. As one reviewer says, it 'brings many historic and interesting details about money that cannot be found anywhere else' -- and the Marx quote seems to be a case in point!

Perhaps some kind snopester has access to the book? Does Kershaw say where he got the Marx quote from or does the trail go cold there?

[BrianB]

Originally Posted by Old Fury

I can perhaps take us back to 1997 (or even 1994 -- seems there was an earlier edition of the possible source).

Great! And welcome to the forums, Old Fury!

messianismequalstyranny.com/33to36.html

I don't want to hijack this thread too much, but I have to say that site is one of the nuttier ones I've seen in a while. For example, that page has the following quote:

"While preaching Liberalism to the goyim [gentile cattle] we...keep our own people and our agents in a state of unquestioning submission" (Protocol No. 15, q. in L. Fry, 1953).

Wow. Outside of Stormfront.org or other Neo Nazi sites I don't see many sites that quote the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Also, from that site's 9/11 page you can read this:

This study concludes that the bombing of the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001 was an "inside job" done at the highest levels of Government by Zionist Jews and their Masonic henchmen. Their oft divulged messianic goal is to destroy the United States and convert it to a "management unit" of their long-planned United Nations Communist World Dictatorship.

Wow, just wow.

Anyway, back to this alleged Marx quote.

Originally Posted by Old Fury

Perhaps some kind snopester has access to the book? Does Kershaw say where he got the Marx quote from or does the trail go cold there?

I don't have a copy but I did find some contact info on an alt.conspiracy post of his from 6 June 1994. However, I doubt if that's still good because I found a site called Heal Our Land Ministries, which I believe is his. That site has contact info that's different. Maybe someone braver than me can try contacting him.
Brian

[snopes]

Originally Posted by Old Fury

Perhaps some kind snopester has access to the book? Does Kershaw say where he got the Marx quote from or does the trail go cold there?

No, he just introduces the quote with the words "Even Karl Marx understood how disastrous a democratic governmental system is:"

It's a wonderful tinfoil hat book, though, full of tinfoil-hatty rants about the Federal Reserve, the IRS, bankers and the New World Order, the UN, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission, all accompanied by tinfoil-hatty quotes (many of them apocryphal).

I thought it amusing that a previous owner of the book felt the need to attach a note to one of the inside pages advising future readers that:

The author of this book does a great job explaining many of the problems of our government run amok. His other books listed here explore the problem in greater depth, but offer few if any solutions. If you are looking for answers you can do better elsewhere.

[Winged Monkey]

Originally Posted by snopes

No, he just introduces the quote with the words "Even Karl Marx understood how disastrous a democratic governmental system is:"

When I first read the Op I did a brief search of the online at the exhaustive Marx/Engels Library Online but it wasn't in the major works - or at least Capital, The Gundresse or the German Ideology -- I didn't find it. Still the man was prolific to say the least, and I am no Marx scholar. I am often struck by Marx's generally positive attitude towards democracy, his opinion that it is the cultural evolutionary stage prior to socialism, and ultimately the form of government that a communist society will have. Thus the quote seems a bit un-Marx because it lumps 'democracy' together as a single system along with capitalism. Marx might have said something like 'bourgeoisie Democracies will not survive" or " As long as capital controls the government, a democracy cannot endure" -- but he's a pretty structured and careful thinker to be dishing out a general claim about democracy like that.

-Winged Monkey