Teen Vogue glorifies Karl Marx — the reactions are what you might expect

Teen Vogue recently published a controversial article titled, "Who is Karl Marx: Meet the Anti-Capitalist Scholar," and promoted it on Twitter, saying that "The political philosopher turned 200-years-old on May 5, but his ideas can still teach us about the past and present."

Author Danielle Corcione vilifies "rich people" and "bosses" in the piece, while gushing that through The Communist Manifesto, Marx "inspired millions of people to resist oppressive political leaders and spark political revolutions all over the world."

Corcione interviewed a high school teacher and former professor about how they incorporate Marx's teachings into their class curriculum.

Former Drexel University professor George Ciccariello-Maher is quoted as saying: "When I teach Marx, it's got a lot to do with questions of how to think critically about history. Marx says we live under capitalism [but] capitalism has not always existed. It's something that came into being and something that, as a result, just on a logical level, could disappear, could be overthrown, could be abolished, could be irrelevant.

"There's this myth of the free market, but Marx shows very clearly that capitalism emerged through a state of violence."

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro responded on Twitter by saying of Marx, "His horrifying and stupid ideas led to the deaths of 100 million human beings and the misery of billions of others. Saved you a click."

National Review's Andrew Stuttaford remarked on the Teen Vogue article: "To deny that Karl Marx was, at times, a startlingly original thinker, would be nutty. To deny that he was, in many respects, one of the most lethal of a long line of millenarian preachers, is to embrace ignorance. And to deny that his work inspired the death of maybe one hundred million victims is something altogether more sinister.

"Marx may or may not have anticipated the scale of slaughter to come, but he understood perfectly well that mass murder was part of the package."

Teen Vogue has a number of articles relating to politics and economics. Last month, the magazine published an article explaining "What 'Capitalism' is and how it affects people."

In that work, Marx was cited for emphasizing capitalism's "capacity to dehumanize workers." Author Kim Kelly also slammed former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the article, saying that her "pro-capitalism stance is said to have devastated the British working class.