“The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance.” Albert Einstein
Marxism is all the latest rage among the young, wealthy, educated class. In a survey earlier this year, 62% of young Americans have a positive view of “socialism,” the ideology that murdered 100 million people at the hands of Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro, Mao, and others. What drives the Marxist culture? Is it displaced guilt, ignorance, a longing for unwarranted power, disregard for the opinion of others, arrogance, or all of the above?
Historian Stephen Kotkin explains the real reason Marxism keeps attracting intellectuals and young people, even after the body count. It is not because the theory works. It is because it offers something far more seductive: total, rapid transformation and a special role for the intellectual class.
Why is Marxism, Marxism-Leninism especially, so attractive to young people and to intellectuals? Why? We have this history, which is a bloody mess. Millions of people die, and they die because of the enactment of this ideology, how could people continue to adhere to an ideology like that during the murderous time period, and even more after the murderous time period when we can look at it dispassionately? Here’s part of the answer.
Again, young people are attracted To impatient, quick, total transformation of the world, eradication of war, eradication of social injustice, and there’s a simplicity to the ideology. It’s kind of a total package. It gets rid of everything bad, just if you do, if you follow the precepts. And so, sure, things happen that shouldn’t have happened. There are some surprises. There are some downsides. But are you pro-capitalism? Are you pro-imperialist war? Are you pro-landowners having all the land and the have-nots having nothing? So there’s this constant threat where if you contravene the ideology, you’re in bed with the very evils that the ideology is trying to overcome.
In a market system, ordinary people make their own decisions. Under Marxism-Leninism, the intellectuals get to make the decisions for everyone. They become the engineers of society. Workers and peasants are treated as people with “false consciousness” who need to be led.
They have this false consciousness. But I know better, and I can be in charge, and I can get us to a better place. Even along the way, bad things are going to happen. Some people who are innocent are going to die or be arrested. But this is the march of history. This march of history is to peace and justice. And who is going to stand in the way of that? Especially when it empowers you personally, so that you could never do this in the private sector.
Nobody could afford you this kind of power in the private sector, and in a in a decentralized political system, in a federalized political system, where nobody accumulates that much power. Social engineering is always coercive, always coercive. The issue is how much of the coercion is necessary that we accept in the trade-off to write some of the things that are obviously wrong.
The ideology flatters the people who believe they are smarter than the rest of society. That is why the blood does not put them off. The power is worth the cost.
In these kind of systems, it’s the intellectuals and the lumpen intellectuals who make those decisions. They use the state as an instrument to overcome the injustices of the existing society. Again, the injustices are real, but that empowers them to be in charge. So the beauty of Marxism-Leninism and why the what we used to call the Third World loves this is because they get to be in power. It empowers them across the board.
They get to make the decisions on the economy, on and they don’t have to submit to elections, they don’t have to have a mandate, they don’t have to legitimate their rule beyond the ideological building of a new world of overcoming injustice. So what we see again and again is young people being impatient for evil to end, but also empowering themselves to be in charge, they love the state. They love the state as an instrument for social justice, social engineering. They love to empower themselves as the decision makers because, after all, they’re the intellectuals. They’ve studied the theory. They know better than others, workers and peasants and the downtrodden, the lower classes-they sometimes have false consciousness. They don’t understand why. For example, we have imperialist war. They get sucked in. Bread and circuses fools them.
Let us not forget that the curriculum in schools plays down or ignores communism, and many Marxist teachers flooded our school system after the 1960s.
Stephen Kotkin explains the real reason Marxism keeps attracting intellectuals and young people, even after the body count.
It is not because the theory works. It is because it offers something far more seductive: total, rapid transformation and a special role for the… pic.twitter.com/H03ROpqH9c
— Commentary – Sowell Economics (@sowelleconomics) August 8, 2026
The Dangerous Loss of Youth to Marxism
Dr. Eric Patterson, President and CEO of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, writes the following.
“Here is the great irony: these young people simultaneously hold anti-institutional views and a gross sense of entitlement. They call for a revolution against corporations and slow-moving government institutions but demand a subsidized first-world lifestyle. They want benefits without work and security without responsibility. After all, doesn’t equality mean free health care, free college, free transportation and guaranteed incomes?
“Then again, what have we taught them? They learned from the COVID lockdowns that money rolls off the state’s printing press, citizens could be paid to lounge at home, and passing grades were “earned” just for showing up on Zoom.”
