Marco Rubio's recent rant on socialism accidentally proved Marx right

In April 2019, the Hard Times (my personal favorite satire site) posted a piece titled, "I Was Brainwashed by the Liberal Media. Then I Saw a Video of a Man Ranting Alone in a Truck."

If you've somehow been fortunate enough to avoid this trend, I can assure you: truck rants are a whole sub-genre unto themselves.

And just the other day, Florida Senator Marco Rubio offered his own contribution to the genre:

Aside from the fact that Rubio was engaged in potential illegal behavior by transmitting data while driving a motor vehicle, his understanding of Marxism is also questionable at best. "At the core of democratic socialism is Marxism," he explains:

At the core of Marxism is this fake offer that if you turn over more of your individual freedom, we're going to provide you security, we're going to provide you free health care, we're going to provide you free education. But the problem is, when they can't deliver on it, or when you're not happy with it, you can't get your freedoms back.

Granted, I haven't read everything that Marx wrote. But in the things I have read, I have yet to find him advocating to "Seize the means of doctor selection." And while there have certainly been authoritarian governments inspired by the Marx's visions of communism, some of them have in fact provided excellent and affordable healthcare despite their other flaws. When it came to education, Marx (along with Engels) was more concerned with how private industry would be incentivized to limit and control the education of its workers, while the workers themselves would inevitably learn to see the ruling class like Rubio for exactly what they are.

What Marx did say, however, was that, "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce." And judging by the sequence of the Hard Times' satire followed by Rubio's ill-informed contribution to the truck rant film genre: Marx was certainly right about that.

Image: Michael Vadon / Flickr via CC BY-SA 2.0 / Public Domain