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drdave@truthreallymatters.com

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What?!?  You’re a Christian and you don’t pass out Gospel tracts?  Check out our tracts essay to change your mind.

This month’s essay (April, 2024) follows below . . .

 

 

 

buy Neurontin Politics is Personal:  The Devil & Karl Marx

 

In 1862 Karl Marx wrote a letter to his friend and partner, Friedrich Engels, noting that his wife’s misery was so poignant and persistent that she said every day that she wished to die.  Marx commented, “Blessed is he who has no family.”

Aristotle once wrote, “Men start revolutionary changes for reasons connected with their private lives.”  Marx was followed by a long line of communist revolutionaries, from Lenin to Mao to Castro to Che, etc., whose personal lives also were dysfunctional, corrupt, and utterly self-centered.  Their apparent coping strategy was to build tyrannies to visit their misery on the multitudes they sought to control.  Paul Kengor:  “No other political ideology has produced as much wretched poverty, rank repression, and sheer violence.”

This is the theme of the 2020 book, The Devil and Karl Marx:  Communism’s Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration, by Paul Kengor, which focuses on the (truly) Satanic influences in the life of Karl Marx, and how these influences have brought misery to the world ever since . . . even and especially in present-day America, in which the culture and every institution is infested and afflicted by Marxist ideology and tactics.  Militant atheism and a rabid anti-Christianity were at the core of Marx’s beliefs and have been central to communism ever since.  In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels declared, “Communism begins where atheism begins.  Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality.”

Consider its success today.  Regarding the LGBTQIA+ takeover of law and culture, the strange proliferation of drag queen story hours, the sexualization of children including pornography in school libraries . . . where are the moral boundaries?  No one asks the cultural Marxists, “What would be immoral?  Where’s the line?”  Of course there are no boundaries for the Marxist, the dedicated follower of Satan.  The goal is deconstruction, obliteration of morality and the Christian foundations that enable a peaceful civilization.  Nikolai Bukharin, Pravda’s founding editor and a lieutenant to Lenin and Stalin asserted, “A fight to the death must be declared upon religion . . . (we must) take on religion at the tip of the bayonet.”

Well, then, “Cry ‘Havoc’, and let slip the dogs of war!”, as Marc Antony (and General Chang) said.  Hey, Christian, wake up!  The war is approaching a crescendo whether you’re on the field or not.  Your part is spiritual – particularly, the Great Commission – so grab some tracts and head out to a neighborhood or a store and launch some Gospel missiles into the fray.

OK, well, back to our story . . .

From Marx’s Communist Manifesto, along with other writings, Kengor summarizes a few key principles:

• Communism seeks “to abolish the present state of things.”
• Communist goals can be achieved “only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.”
• Communists will support all kinds of revolutionary movements as long as they work against the existing social and political order.
• A fruitful communist tactic is the “ruthless criticism of all that exists.”
• Marx loves the quote from Goethe’s Faust: “Everything that exists deserves to perish.”
• In Marx’s essay declaring that religion is “the opium of the people,” he asserted that “the criticism of religion is the beginning of all criticism.”

You might observe that these sentiments are perfectly in sync with Satan’s desire to overthrow God, destroy His imagebearers, and tear down everything good in creation.  Robert Payne’s biography of Marx includes this analysis:  “And after he has abolished property, family, and nations, and all existing societies, Marx shows little interest in creating a new society on the ruins of the old.”  In one of Marx’s poems he imagines throwing a gauntlet at the world (the Communist Manifesto, perhaps), watching the world crumble, and wandering through the ruins, his words glowing, with a heart like the heart of God.  Perfectly Satanic.

Kengor points out that a lot of people don’t recognize Marxism’s war against all of us today, because they think of it in the 19^th century terms in which Karl Marx developed it – economic war between the working class and the property-holding elites.  By the mid-20^th century communist ‘intellectuals’ recognized that the economics of communism had failed completely, and so they shifted to the cultural and the sexual.  But the vision never changed – destroy Chrisitianity, destroy morality, persecute Christians, and corrupt the society so severely that it cannot recover.  From Satan’s point of view in the spiritual realm, harden the culture so thoroughly that the Gospel will be despised and no one would consider becoming a Christian.  The Devil wants to populate Hell with as many image-bearers as possible.

Kengor notes that as he drafted his last chapter, the lead article at CPUSA’s website was entitled, “The Capitalist Culture of Male Supremacy and Misogyny.”  Such is the intellectual fare of modern communists.

In the book’s Foreward, Michael Knowles observes that socialism has succeeded everywhere it has been tried, “at least for a time.”  He points out that the problem with socialism isn’t the inefficiency, but rather the evil.  Karl Marx, like modern Marxists, “sought to radically transform society by changing human nature.”  This is Satan’s war against God, featuring persistent denials of the reality created and sustained by God.

I would go further than Knowles.  It’s not that socialism succeeds, only apparently, for just  a while when it takes over.  It succeeds thoroughly by corrupting and destroying souls for a generation at least, once it takes hold within a nation.  It is designed to corrupt and to destroy.  As of 2023 the Russian and Chinese tyrannies have persisted for a century.  How many souls have perished in that century, particularly those who were prevented from hearing or considering (freely) the Gospel?

Kengor:  “Marxism from the outset was a seriously perverse ideology that brooded in misery, wallowed in misery, advanced itself in the name of misery, and ultimately produced misery.”

Under communism there are no individual unalienable rights, no rights endowed by the Creator.  I have lived long enough to see, amazingly, free speech disappear on college campuses and in other aspects of American life.  I recently saw a news report that Harvard University was ranked worst among all American colleges and universities for free speech.  Students profess that it is impossible to have friendly and open discussions on a large list of topics wherein the Marxist narratives have already been settled.

Ronald Reagan wondered whether mankind can survive Communism.  He called it a “vicious disease.”  Also, “Communism is neither an economic or a political system – it is a form of insanity.”

Insanity:  a denial of God’s ordained reality.  Marx’s biographer, Robert Payne, concluded that Marx “had the devil’s view of the world, and the devil’s malignity.  Sometimes he knew that he was accomplishing works of evil.”  Payne further speculated that Marx, although not a Satanist – after all, Marx was a determined atheist – was, in fact, possessed by a demonic spirit.

A caveat on Paul Kengor’s perspective – he views spiritual warfare from a Roman Catholic perspective.  Accordingly, he is happy to quote RC authors, Pope Benedict XVI, for example, who noted that the fatal flaw of communists is that their anthropology is wrong:  they don’t understand man, especially man’s spiritual need to find God.  A consequence of this denial of reality is the original emphasis of Marxism, that economics is the alpha and omega of human existence.

Jesus, however, reminded Satan that man does not live by bread alone.  Satan, rather, historically inspired communists to obsess on money and material things.  Currently, the emphasis has shifted to identity or denial of one’s God-given identity.  Whatever works.  Whatever serves to deny God’s order and distract men and women and children from recognizing their need of forgiveness and salvation.

Marx wrote that human nature had to be changed.  In the Soviet Union, the idealized ‘Soviet man’ would learn, drill, and memorize the text of the Communist Manifesto, while shunning any counter-revolutionary literature, especially the Bible.  Religion was considered to be a powerful enemy, not to be taken lightly.

Communists have therefore persecuted Christians diligently.  Richard Wurmbrand, in his autobiography Tortured for Christ, states, “All the biblical descriptions of hell and the pains of Dante’s Inferno are nothing in comparison with the tortures in Communist prisons.”  Some torturers would declare, “I am the devil.”  Another told him:  “I thank God in whom I don’t believe, that I have lived to this hour when I can express all the evil in my heart.”  Wurmbrand experienced first-hand how Communism deals with its enemies.

In their Communist Manifesto (1848), Marx and Engels advocated the abolition of private property and right of inheritance, centralization and state control of communication, transportation, industry, and agriculture, and a free public school education to conform the thinking of future generations.  Strikingly, they proclaimed, “Abolition of the family!”  They desired “the most radical rupture in traditional relations.”

They admitted their program required despotism, and that “their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.”  Revolution, even violence would be necessary.  Lenin followed this path in Russia:  “The truth is that no revolution can be successful unless the resistance of the exploiters is crushed.”  We should recall these sentiments when we observe the antics of the Left in the West.  Regardless of the topic, there is no interest in analysis or debate; the tactics are intimidation, defamation, even violence.

The young Karl Marx was a determined poet.  Poetry was his refuge.  But his poetry was dark and troubled.  For example . . . “the hellish vapors rise and fill the brain, Till I go mad and my heart is utterly changed.  See this sword?  The Prince of Darkness sold it to me.  For me he beats the time and gives the signs.  Ever more boldly I play the dance of death.”

The poem is entitled, “The Player,” whose identity is clearly Lucifer, and the music he plays frenetically is meant to accompany the end of the world.  The Player, a violinist, destroys the world to spite God, while deriding and mocking the Creator.

In another poem, the love of his life drinks poison and dies and goes to the flames.  Robert Payne comments, “for a man does not write such things unless he is on the verge of madness or despair.”  Tragically, the evil in Marx’s life was visited upon those around him.  Two of Marx’s daughters killed themselves with poison in suicide pacts.

A notable aspect of Kengor’s book is that most biographies of Marx neglect the spiritual issues, discounting the Satanic, and relegating the early poems of Marx to the folly of youth.  Namely, most biographers take a secular perspective on his life, a perspective that Marx, himself, might well be content with.

Marx also wrote a poetic play entitled Oulanem, an anagram for “Manuelo,” or “Emmanuel” – God.  In the play violence is turned against all of mankind; the characters are learned in the arts of destruction and are consumed with a rage for vengeance.  This was Marx’s attempt to match Goethe’s Faust.  Marx loved Goethe’s line, “Everything that exists deserves to perish,” and used it in multiple writings.  In Oulanem every character is aware of his own corruption and yet flaunts it and celebrates it.  Such celebration of evil is certainly prevalent in our current culture, more than in any previous generation, perhaps since the days of Noah.

Karl was born Jewish, but his parents converted and raised him to be Lutheran.  Karl became an atheist in his college years.  In his thesis at age 23 in 1841 he quoted the Roman philosopher Lucretius, condemning the “burden of oppressive religion,” and “Religion lies at our feet, completely defeated.”

As a teen and young adult, Marx refused to work for a living, parasitically drawing income from his parents.  When his parents finally cut him off, it enraged him.  Karl’s mother wished that “Karl would accumulate capital instead of just writing about it.”  His wife complained along the same lines, bitterly.  Karl’s wife and children were regularly short of money, food, a steady roof over their heads, and even medical care.  After the financial cutoff, Karl didn’t visit his mother for twenty years, and only then to pressure her for cash.

Karl was a serial moocher, trying to hustle relatives, friends, fellow travelers in the Communist cause, and anyone he might con into supporting him.  Marx envied Engels’ wealth and begged money from him continually; eventually Engels cut off the money flow, too.  Marx’s personal habits were disgusting:  drinking, smoking, lack of exercise, warts and boils from lack of washing, the stink of not washing his clothes.  The apartment was always a mess, with broken furniture, broken dishes, and broken toys strewn about.

The point is that when Satan takes over a life, it affects every aspect.

The family ‘employed’ a nanny, Lenchen, but Karl didn’t pay her.  Kengor:  The “champion of the proletariat, protestor against wage exploitation, never paid Lenchen a penny.” She was a virtual bondslave, and was sexually abused by Karl, which was a grief to his wife, Jenny.  Lenchen eventually got pregnant.  Karl refused to admit his responsibility and never paid any child support.

Karl and Jenny had three daughters, but he denied them an adequate education, hindered them from pursuing careers, and was hostile to suitors.  Four of Marx’s six children died before he did, and the two daughters who survived him later committed suicide.

Karl was also an outspoken racist against blacks and Jews, despite his Jewish heritage.  Kengor has much to say about Karl’s specific racist comments, but I won’t mention them here.

Friedrich Engels was also morally degenerate.  A year after Marx’s death in 1883, Engels published his book, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.  It included considerable material contributed by Marx.  Some of the ideas . . . a mother’s housework should be co-opted by the State, so mothers can return to more ‘meaningful’ work in the fields and factories.  Childcare would be a communal task.  Education, of course, would be State-run.  Engels hoped, “The single family ceases to be the economic unit of society.”  One useful result, he anticipated, would be “the gradual growth of unconstrained sexual intercourse.”

Lenin followed Marx in hating God and God’s works:  “Any religious idea, any idea of any god at all, any flirtation even with a god, is the most inexpressible foulness . . . the most shameful ‘infection.’”  Lenin likened religious belief to venereal disease.

On Christmas day in 1919, Comrade Lenin ordered his secret police to be alert to anyone who failed to show up for work . . . they should be shot.  In the summer of 1918 in the Yekaterinburg diocese, forty-seven clergymen were shot, drowned, or axed to death.  This was just one incident in a long campaign directed by Lenin.

Leon Trotsky rejoiced in Darwinism.  “The idea of evolution and determinism took possession of me completely . . . I was intoxicated with his (Darwin’s) thought.”

We can trace a direct line of ideology from Marx through Lenin through other Marxists right up to the present day.  Hatred of God and God’s word is core to Critical Race Theory, gender ideology, and every wokist perversion under the sun.

The Soviet Union was officially atheist.  “It was not neutral,” Kengor notes.  This hostility continues today in China, North Korea, and Cuba.  Leftists in the West are working hard in the same direction.

Marx designed a philosophical system and a ruthless mindset to enable the overthrow of the existing order, but did not explain how to rule after the success of the revolution.  Marx figured, “all contradictions would be resolved, man and the world would finally sort themselves out.  Then everything would be able to proceed by itself along the right path.”  In effect, utopia would follow the revolution ‘naturally.’

Marxist revolutions have certainly had their opportunities.  Communists were successful in the revolutions of Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, Venezuela, and other places.  Tragedies followed in every case . . . inevitably.  The ongoing revolutions in the West show the same trademarks.  In CRT, once the white supremacists (all of the white people) are demonized and oppressed and the reparations are forcibly extracted, what then?  Does utopia break out?  There are no answers from the communists who surround us.

Kengor has much to say about liberal or progressive ‘Christians,’ and their sympathy with Communist causes, sharing sentiments about workers’ rights, wealth redistribution, and other areas generally lumped into ‘social justice.’  An expert ex-communist, Herbert Romerstein, concluded that communists found progressive pastors to be “the biggest suckers of them all.”

As an example, Kengor recounts how communists infiltrated men’s groups within the RCC in the 1930s.  Catholic men’s groups were quite active in anti-communist initiatives back then.  But communists were even able to infiltrate the editorial board of Wisdom, a Catholic anti-communist publication.

In the 1930s political realm, communists within the Roosevelt administration convinced FDR to establish formal diplomatic relations with Stalin’s totalitarian USSR, after previous US presidents had rejected Stalin’s attempts.

American communist leader Earl Browder was proud of their successes in achieving ‘united fronts’ with various church groups to promote social justice issues.  He admitted, of course, that as a communist he despised all religions, but he was happy to accept their help on specific causes; he saw the united fronts as a way to bring anti-religious ideas to their unwitting partners.

Kengor:  “As communists in the West assured Christians that they wanted to shake hands with them, communists in the East and elsewhere handcuffed them and blew up their churches.”  Kengor goes on to develop a fairly detailed history of communist efforts in America during the 20^th century, including the infiltration of seminaries, both Protestant and Catholic.  An example:  In the 1930s communists were told by the Party to rejoin the churches they had left in order to establish cells for both influence and takeover.

Bella Dodd admitted in the 1950s that the Communist Party subsidized hundreds of young men to go into the ministry, especially into the more liberal churches.

The Communist pattern of deceit, infiltration, and corruption has persisted since its beginnings in the 19^th century.  A Romanian spy chief who defected to the West in the 1970s admitted that Liberation Theology was created by the KGB.  These ideas were critical motivations for several Latin American revolutions in the late 20^th century.

Harry Hay (1912 – 2002) is credited as the founder of the modern gay movement.  Hay used a combination of Marxism, Native American revivalism, and New Age spirituality to advance gay and transgender causes.  His shrewdest tactical move was to portray homosexuals as a ‘minority’ class, evoking sympathy from the Left.  Author Will Roscoe asserts, “Without the idea of Gays as a cultural minority, there would be no Gay identity and no Lesbian/Gay movement today.”

The Communist Party in America has embraced all forms of sexual libertinism, ruthlessly criticizing every traditional moral value.  Destroying morality has become a favored means to destroy Christian influence, the family, and other pillars of peaceful civilization.

Kengor concludes his book with a detailed discussion that ties all that is woke with Marxism, but I’ll trust you to acquire his book, which I highly recommend.  Analysis of ‘woke’ issues is trivially easy, as I see it, from a Christian point of view.  If it’s woke, it’s anti-Christian and it’s evil.  Simple, huh.  Sin is blatant now; subtlety is gone.

If you embrace a Christian worldview at all, why would you embrace any idea that originates in the demon-possessed life of Karl Marx?  It does matter where the idea originates.  What might seem plausible on the surface may connect to a deeper, sinister agenda.  Christian principles, on the other hand, originate in the character of the Lord Jesus Christ.  The key elements of His life and His teachings are recorded in Scripture for all to see, and for all to decide to accept or to reject.

But there is a more dangerous trap for Christians in this age of unrestrained wickedness.  Too many Christians respond to the political and cultural threats of this day without recognizing their spiritual core.  Their energy goes primarily into politics and complaining about the culture.  I have visited adult Sunday School classes that feature considerable discussion on the woes of today’s culture.  I have interrupted such discussions with the question, “Well, what are you all doing about it?”

The Christian’s response should be and must be what has always been the mission – the Great Commission.  Share the Gospel.  That’s the solution, the only solution.  Don’t just pray for political change.  Pray for power to share the Gospel effectually.  God might just bless that.

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com