wage's law

02 May 2006

I would like to propose a complement to Godwin’s Law aimed particularly at conservative rhetoric that involves Marx instead of Hitler. I am not sure which form it should take, though, so here are a few stabs:

The number of times that “Marxist” is used as an epithet by an author is inversely proportional to the likelihood that they have ever read any Marx.

The invocation of Marx should be taken as an indication that the author has no substantive economic or social critique to make.

I dunno – I’ll consider it a work in progress. In the meantime, today’s offender is Terry Frank, who not only invokes Marx without context, but also misquotes him. Great work!