Marxism at the Museum What does donor Stephen Schwarzman think of these anti-capitalist exhibits? Andy Kessler
“This is a rather loud message to capitalists Bezos, Musk, Page, Brin, Zuckerberg: Give your money away if you want to be remembered kindly. Just don’t give your money to libraries or museums. Please.”
Polls show more than half of 18- to 24-year-olds in the U.S. have a negative view of capitalism. More than half have a positive view of socialism. I wonder where they got that.
I recently strolled through the New York Public Library’s “Treasures” exhibit, which would delight readers and writers alike: Charles Dickens’s writing desk, a manuscript delivered in a box from former newspaper columnist Mark Twain, draft cover art for Jack Kerouac’s novel “On the Road,” and an illustrated page from Tom Wolfe’s “The Bonfire of the Vanities” manuscript. Pretty cool stuff.
Ah look, a first edition of Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” from 1776—the free-market bible. I was in awe until I read the description: “Adam Smith believed, as did Karl Marx the following century, that national prosperity was best measured by a country’s labor power rather than by how much gold lay in its treasury.” I guess the description is technically correct, but Karl Marx? In the same breath as Adam Smith, who called free markets “the obvious and simple system of natural liberty”? Unlike Smith, Marx naively saw a static world without productivity, only labor exploitation. He completely missed that labor is more brain than brawn. Add exhibit curators to the list of socialist tub thumpers.
I wonder what Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the rather capitalistic private-equity firm Blackstone and giver of $100 million to the New York Public Library, whose name is etched in stone outside, thinks about the Marxist agenda of the library’s curators.
Wouldn’t you know it, next to “The Wealth of Nations” was none other than manuscript notes for “Das Kapital” by Karl Marx with this description: “The work has exerted an immense and lasting influence on world events: over the past century, its ideas have not only maintained a secure place in the realm of economic and political theory, but also inspired anticapitalist revolutions across the globe.” OK, but it was a lasting negative influence. And of course there was no mention of the hundreds of millions of people impoverished and slaughtered by Marxist regimes.
The description goes on: “Karl Marx’s foundational account of capitalist production and its manifold effects on human lives still inspires argument, insight, and resistance.” Inspires? Marxism is a desperate and dangerous call for redistribution from the productive class to, say, museum curators. No matter, a 2018 New York Times opinion piece blared, “Happy Birthday, Karl Marx. You Were Right!” The Marx rehabilitation tour continues.
A 2020 Edelman global survey found that 56% agreed that “capitalism as it exists today does more harm than good in the world.” Really? I guess somehow the global increase in living standards and lowering of the extreme poverty rate from 36% to under 10% since 1990 happened by magic. It’s really a miracle since capitalism is so bad and Marxism is so good. Of the porous southern border President Biden recently noted, “What’s on my watch now is Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua.” Why would anyone leave a Marxist paradise for the capitalist U.S.? Maybe the New York Public Library has an answer.
An almost fanatical devotion to Marxism is everywhere. The Journal’s Eric Gibson wrote a fantastic piece last month titled “Woke Ideologues Are Taking Over American Art Museums,” which got serious pushback from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We’re exposed to anticapitalist agendas every day.
You wouldn’t expect this from the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, but here are some words under Cornelius Vanderbilt’s portrait: “He began in the rough-and-tumble world of the New York port and by 1829 had parlayed several small shipping ventures into a stake in the lucrative Hudson River trade.” No mention that he did this by offering lower prices and better service than the Hudson River Steamboat Association, a government-sanctioned monopoly. Still, the museum labels the Commodore a “ruthless monopolist.” He was no saint, but he did provide affordable steamships to San Francisco and helped expand railroads. Like the term “robber baron,” this is anticapitalist propaganda disguised as education.
Here’s another from the Portrait Gallery: “John D. Rockefeller once remarked ‘The only question with wealth is, what do you do with it?’ By 1913, Rockefeller, a founder of the Standard Oil Company, had amassed an estimated $900 million, earned from an aggressive reorganization of the oil industry.” Get it? Wealth is evil and never deserved. Remarkably, no mention of his role in driving down the price to consumers of energy that boosted a rapidly expanding economy. Again, no saint, but the gallery notes, he “rehabilitated his reputation in later years by supporting charitable causes.”
This is a rather loud message to capitalists Bezos, Musk, Page, Brin, Zuckerberg: Give your money away if you want to be remembered kindly. Just don’t give your money to libraries or museums. Please.
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