The common perception of the term "psychopath" is the criminal psychopath, such as John Wayne Gacy or Ted Bundy. But there is a growing awareness that the distinguishing factor in the psychopathic condition is the absence of emotional connection - no sympathy, no empathy, no conscience, no remorse, no guilt - whether the psychopath is chopping up human bodies or defrauding investors of billions of dollars. Identified sub-types include Political Psychopaths, Corporate Psychopaths, and Military Psychopaths, in addition to mass murderers.
Karl Marx (1818-1883)
THE HARE PSYCHOPATHY CHECK LIST Revised (PCL-R)
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Factor 1 Aggressive narcissism (malignant narcissism)
- Glibness/superficial charm
- Grandiose sense of self-worth
- Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
- Pathological lying
- Cunning/manipulative
- Lack of remorse or guilt
- Shallow affect [i.e. superficial experience and expression of emotions]
- Callous/lack of empathy Factor 2 - Socially deviant lifestyle
- Parasitic lifestyle
- Poor behavioural controls
- Promiscuous sexual behaviour
- Early behaviour problems
- Lack of realistic long-term goals
- Impulsivity
- Irresponsibility
- Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
- Many short term marital relationships
- Juvenile delinquency
- Revocation of conditional release
- Criminal versatility
Marx's family on both sides was descended from a long line of Jewish rabbis, but his parents converted to Lutheranism for business and political reasons. Marx repudiated his family values and all Judeo-Christian values. Marx was something of a juvenile delinquent (12, 18), and wasted a year at Bonn University partying and drinking and going into debt (6, 12, 14, 15, 16). His father had to pay his son's debts and he then sent young Marx to the University of Berlin where Marx soon joined radical groups (3), and the course of his life was settled.
Marx was incapable of holding a steady job (15), and lived precariously on intermittent low-paying work as a journalist, supplemented by several inheritances from his family and his wife's family (Marx eagerly awaited the death of an elderly relative from whom he expected an inheritance). Other resources were mainly derived from "borrowing" money from fellow radicals (6, 9), and Friedrich Engels helped support the Marx family for years. His wife was totally loyal to him, but they lived in extreme poverty and several of their children died of malnutrition and illness (15). The evidence indicates that Marx had an illegitimate son (11) by the family housekeeper, Helen Demuth. Back when such things mattered to socialists and communists, Marx and his followers tried to conceal the existence of Marx's illegitimate son. Demuth was a wedding gift from Marx's wife's family and lived with the Marx family until Karl died, receiving only room and board; in other words, Demuth's status was identical to that of a household slave.
From the Gale Encyclopedia of Biography as quoted in answers.com:
"A man of immense learning and sharp intellectual power, Marx, often impatient and irascible antagonized people by his sardonic wit, bluntness, and dogmatism, which bordered on arrogance. His enemies were legion."From which we can infer that Marx had a grandiose sense of self-worth (2), was cunning/manipulative (5), was callous/lack(ing) of empathy (8), had poor behavioural controls (10), and had a lack of realistic long-term goals (15). So, Marx would appear to have many traits associated with psychopathy.
For a person who claimed to champion the working man, Marx was remarkably indifferent toward actual working people and certainly did not get his own hands dirty, not from work at any rate. Marx died in London in 1883, unnoted and unremarked. There were eleven people at his funeral, all family and/or politically radical associates. Marx left no legacy but his writings and a network of fellow psychopaths, the most influential being Vladimir Lenin, followed by a long string of would-be revolutionaries and criminal psychopaths: Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, Kim Il-Sung, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, and their ilk. Political and military psychopaths unanimously morph into violent criminal psychopaths when they gain sufficient power, with lawyers (Lenin, Castro) and warlords (Mao, Kim Il-Sung) predominating. The enduring appeal of Marxism is precisely among those influential few who share Marx's psychopathic outlook, and those who can be bought or brainwashed into supporting Marxist goals.
Marx is reputed to be one of the greatest among economic and social thinkers, but this opinion is held primarily among his muddled followers who have their own psychopathic tendencies: wannabe revolutionaries, dotty Marxist professors (Bill Ayers, Clower and Piven, etc.), and their students in journalism and law. These are areas where good little Marxists can accumulate and exercise influence, and confirm their identities within a cause greater than themselves. Without such a cause, run-of-the-mill Marxists in academia, journalism, and law would be moderately intelligent nobodies with deficient egos. Regardless of the quality of Marx's cogitations, application of his principles to actual governance in Marxist states has an unrelenting history of destruction, disaster, and death, a record that leftists with psychopathic tendencies find quite attractive. But Hitler was at least equally psychopathic and achieved similar results on a much smaller scale, and International Socialists hate National Socialists at least as much as they hate stone cold sober productive Conservatives, also known as Classical Liberals, such as Thomas Jefferson.
Every "classless" Marxist society that ever existed has soon dissolved into a savage dictatorship with three classes of citizens: the nomenclatura, the worker drones, and the kulaks and useless idiots who are executed or starved as an example to everyone else. There have been many attempts to implement Marxist-model systems: all have failed, just as you might expect of a system devised by a psychopath and implemented by psychopaths. Hard Marxist regimes fail, soft Marxist Social-Democratic Europe is failing now, and the hybrid Chinese bubble is threatening collapse. If the Soviets and other Marxist regimes ever had a real interest in Marxist philosophy, it was soon abandoned in favor of brute power for the elite nomenclatura.
America is declining to the degree we have embraced statist, collectivist visions during the last eighty years. Psychopathic tendencies are common throughout the world and throughout history, but modern communications technology has made psychopathy a worldwide threat beginning in the Twentieth Century. Marxists are discredited by their own flawed philosophy, and even more by their own incompetence and corruption. Marx's economic theories are the worst nonsense, and have never worked in practice. The attraction of Marxism is not that it will eventually create a perfect system - that is propaganda for useless idiots. The attraction of Marxism is that it gives psychopaths power now, and Marxists will destroy anyone who stands in their way.
Comment: Indeed. Societies built on the ideology of psychopaths are bound to collapse as we know from our history. An excellent opus by Dr. Andrzej M. Łobaczewski's Political Ponerology: The Scientific Study of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes describes the process of the indoctrination of psychopathic ideology in a society of normal people (ponerization) and its possible outcomes. The book can be acquired here.
© en.pilulerouge.comPolitical Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes
The founders of the American Republic introduced a new concept of freedom and self governance and it has achieved unparalleled success, which drives totalitarians of every stripe to distraction. Our Republic is now under threat from Corporate and Political Psychopaths who have no empathy, no conscience, no remorse, no guilt, and who are "insane without delirium," as psychopathy was once defined. Actual working people almost unanimously reject Marxism unless bought off with unearned "entitlements" or coerced as were the kulaks, five million of whom died from Soviet coercion.
Do you wonder that Marxist politicians and their allies and associates are corrupt and dishonest and keep getting richer, while the Republic and its citizens, including the poor, are getting poorer? It is because Marxist politicians and their associates are psychopaths.
at character assassination. Marx may not have been a saint, but he had a keen insight into economic reality, and his analysis of capitalism has not been bettered. An inability (which we all share) to predict the exact course of events in the future does not detract from this conclusion.