Who are the top Marxists?

Here is the result of one survey, thanks to www.crookedtimber.org. First place goes to Rosa Luxembourg, I suppose that Marx himself is out of the running by definition.

Why is she number one? Could it be because of her violent murder in 1919, which both martyred her, and likely prevented her from later endorsing totalitarian regimes?

You will note that numbers three (Lenin) and seven (Mao) on the list are mass murderers, don’t neglect to follow this link to Bryan Caplan’s award-winning site on the communist slaughter of innocents.

I don’t want to go on record as, well, “pushing” for Stalin, but I can’t help noticing that he doesn’t even make the top thirty. There is, after all, a book called The Essential Stalin, on his theoretical contributions. Nor can it be said that mass murder is an immediate disqualification from doing well on the list. Note that the creator of this poll, who calls himself anti-communist, is both highly intelligent and honest in his writing. He questions whether a poll of “top Nazis” would be no less legitimate, remarking that “greatness” and “goodness” are not the same thing.

My question: Would they have let me vote for David Horowitz?

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