Karl Marx published his great works 200 years ago and they inspired regimes which killed millions of people.

But some academics still believe there are lessons to be learned from a man who called for the overthrow of capitalism and preached an ideology of global socialist revolution.

Now a political scholar from Washington State University called Claudia Leeb has published a paper which claims that Marx can help us to understand the rise of the far right across the West.

Although she stopped short of labelling President Donald Trump far-right, he is a spectre which haunts her article.

Portrait of Karl Marx (1818-1883), a German political philosopher who inspired communism

‘This paper challenges the prevailing view that Marx does not have anything to offer when it comes to analysing the rise of the far right today, which is why there is almost no literature on the far right that draws on Marx,’ she wrote.

Leeb, a radical left-wing feminist, questions why ‘the (white) working-classes in the United States and elsewhere turned to the far right that further undermines their existence, instead of uniting with the raced and gendered working class to overthrow capitalism’.

‘I do not aim to pathologise the white working-classes, but it does need to be explained why in their genuine suffering they are turning to leaders who will only make their lives worse off,’ she added.

Her argument is difficult to grasp for anyone who is not well-versed in the often arcane language and concepts of Marxism and Lacanian psychology – which is named after the French thinker Jacques Lacan and also inspired Leeb’s thesis.

A Chinese Communist Poster showing Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong (Photo: Getty)

She relates the slogan ‘make America great again’ to the search for ‘wholeness’ discussed by psychologists who believe our identities are fractured or incomplete.

Leeb suggests white, male working-class Americans adopt the ideology of the far right to fulfil an unconscious desire to be whole, while also allowing them to compensate for failures which make them feel ‘non-whole’ and inadequate, such as their inability to achieve the economic success of the American Dream.

To plug the hole caused by this inadequacy, she says, white men turn to hatred of women or ethnic minorities.

She wrote: ‘The members of the far right in Louisiana talked freely about the anxieties they had about Mexicans and Muslims, even if they are only a small part of the population.

President Donald Trump speaks at a rally Monday, Nov. 26, 2018, in Biloxi, Miss. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
It’s fair to say that Donald Trump is not a Marxist (Photo: AP Photo/ Rogelio V. Solis)

‘By displacing their anxieties of remaining non-whole in the ruling ideology of the Dream upon branded groups, they can feel themselves whole or “great again,” although the lingering feelings of anxiety that they are far from having achieved the [American] Dream, and that they are breathing in polluted air, eating toxic food, working in dangerous factory jobs, and looming new environmental disasters, remain.

‘Moreover, what also remains is their subjugated position within American society, which they can only overcome if they unite with those the far right brands as inferior.’

Leeb also draws parallels between the opioid epidemic in America and Marx’s famous description of religion as the ‘opium of the people’.

‘The current opioid epidemic in the United States, which is largely afflicting the working-classes, shows the centrality of Marx’s analysis,’ she added.

‘It explains that the (white) working-classes are suffering and that the suffering needs to be dealt with in a way that helps to push for positive social change—else the far right exploits it and displaces the source of the suffering onto others (immigrants, Mexicans, Muslims, etc.); and/or the working classes aim to dull such suffering through a turn to the far right, religion and/or drugs, which makes people passive.

‘A recent study shows that the chronic use of prescription opioid drugs was correlated with support for Trump in the 2016 US presidential election, and is the result of subjects’ socioeconomic suffering, which they aimed to dull with their support of the far right, which functioned like an opiate insofar as it allowed them to feel great.’

Leeb then calls on the white working class to abandon its desire for wholeness, shrug off right-wing ideology and join ‘the gendered and raced working-class and cast off their chains in a proletarian revolution.

‘The article provides an alternative explanation for the far right that the mystification and division in the working classes has to do with the expression of white, masculine supremacy, more so than economic dislocation,’ said political scientist Laurie Naranch from Siena College in Albany, New York.