The G&M Pimps for Marx

In the Saturday Globe and Mail, this teaser appears at the top of the first page of the Globe Focus section:

MARX IS IN THE AIR
Elizabeth Renzetti explains why even uber-capitalists like George Soros are swooning for the Communist Manifesto.

"Swooning," huh--why, they haven't done that since Obama came to town.

The teaser leads you to this, Renzetti's love song to Karl Marx, a helluva thinker and a misunderstood guy. (In an astonishing and perhaps unintentionally amusing bit of tone-deafness, the piece is headlined "Springtime for Marx," a play on that Hitler song from The Producers.) Not only that, Marx was a proto-environmentalist, too. In a middle section featuring a number of his utterances, the Globe includes this:

ON THE ENVIRONMENT
"The development of civilization and industry in general has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison."

He's a regular David Suzuki, is that K.M.; someone who, had he been around today, would definitely have shut off the lights and sat in the dark to show solidarity with Earth Hour. And the multi-millions who have died/been killed as a direct result of his cockamamie theories? For those who champion Marxism as an alternative to capitalism, the deaths are mere statistics (as Joseph Stalin, another nature lover, once sagely observed).

Update: You knew it was coming:

Economy was having trouble,
What a sad, sad story.
Needed an old theorist to restore
Its former glory.
Where, oh, where was he?
Where could that man be?
We looked around and then we found
The man for you and me
And now it's...
Springtime for Marx's economy.
Hobsbawm is happy again!
We've got our heads stuck up our rears.
Look out, you will be hearing cheers re
Springtime for Marx's economy.
Spreading the riches around.
Springtime for Marx's economy.
(Watch out, Europe,
You're running aground!)...