I don’t care what the Founding Fathers would have wanted, I don’t care if Jesus was a hippie or not, I don’t care what Marx prescribed. I can’t take living in a world where we’re all servants of long-dead men. You know what happens if you make a law the Founding Fathers wouldn’t like? Nothing, they’re dead and they’re never coming back. I’m genuinely envious of countries that can just make whatever laws they want without worrying about how 18th century agrarian noblemen would have seen it. Stop arguing that Jesus loved the poor too, what he loved or didn’t love is irrelevant, he doesn’t get a say in any of this. We could have a country that isn’t shackled to these ghosts if we collectively wanted to.
I get this and I somewhat agree, but we live in a world that has been materially shaped by all who came before us. We can't help but be shackled to ghosts. We can fight the ideas of some ghosts and build on the ideas of others, but we can't build a new world in the middle of the air. We read Marx because he identified and described material realities that are still deeply relevant. That doesn't mean he was always right or had a solution to every problem. But there's no point in trying to reinvent the wheel. We can't understand the present or build a future without the past.
