The Devil and Karl Marx

Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

Paul Kengor

• Publisher: TAN Books
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781505114447
• eBook ISBN: 9781505114461
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Two decades after the publication of The Black Book of Communism, nearly everyone is or at least should be, aware of the immense evil produced by that devilish ideology first hatched when Karl Marx penned his Communist Manifesto two centuries ago. Far too many people, however, separate Marx the man from the evils wrought by the oppressive ideology and theory that bears his name. That is a grave mistake. Not only did the horrific results of Marxism follow directly from Marx's twisted ideas, but the man himself penned some downright devilish things. Well before Karl Marx was writing about the hell of communism, he was writing about hell.

"Thus Heaven I've forfeited, I know it full well, " he wrote in a poem in 1837, a decade before his Manifesto. "My soul, once true to God, is chosen for Hell." That certainly seemed to be the perverse destiny for Marx's ideology, which consigned to death over 100 million souls in the twentieth century alone.

No other theory in all of history has led to the deaths of so many innocents. How could the Father of Lies not be involved?

At long last, here, in this book by Professor Paul Kengor, is a close, careful look at the diabolical side of Karl Marx, a side of a man whose fascination with the devil and his domain would echo into the twentieth century and continue to wreak havoc today. It is a tragic portrait of a man and an ideology, a chilling retrospective on an evil that should have never been let out of its pit.

PART 1

THE SPECTER

CHAPTER 1

“A SPECTER IS
HAUNTING EUROPE”

THE UNCLEAN SPIRIT OF COMMUNISM

The opening lines of the Communist Manifesto could not have been more eerily apt: “A specter is haunting Europe—the specter of communism,” wrote Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848. “All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.”

Marx and Engels opted for such words: a specter, a haunting specter—a specter haunting Europe. Marx and Engels further opted for the word “exorcise”—the process for expunging a demon. Jesus Christ expelled demons. The Roman Catholic Church has long had a Rite of Exorcism for ridding people of demonic infestation. The very first image chosen by Marx and Engels to describe their ideology in the opening line of their book seems quite telling if not chilling. Whether it was serious or sarcastic, perhaps tongue in cheek (Marx had a mordant sense of humor), it was nonetheless fitting, and prophetic. They were on to something, or something was on to them and their ideology. If ever a force could be described as a haunting specter in dire need of exorcism, the phantom unleashed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels fit the bill.

The two could not have conjured up a better description of what would play out in the course of history.

Marx and Engels correctly noted that all the powers of Europe were allied against this phantom or, that is, had “entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre.” They named great statesmen like Klemens Von Metternich as well as authorities such as German police-spies (who actually had Marx under surveillance). They singled out the pope. They pointed to the Russian czar, one of which three decades earlier had called for a Holy Alliance at the Congress of Vienna. Scarcely could Czar Alexander have foreseen the infernal beast that would devour his beloved Russia a century later. The pope of the day, Pius IX, actually had foreseen it.

And why wouldn’t the powers of Europe desire a holy alliance against this specter? They all recognized that an unholy spirit dwelled within their midst. Here in this chapter, we will take our first look at the contours of that specter and of the man who summoned it.

Communist Catechism

Marx and Engels viewed the initial draft of their manifesto as a revolutionary “catechism” for an awaiting world. More than that, they saw it and referred to it, certainly in the initial draft stage, as a literal Communist Confession of Faith, before opting for the title that stuck. “Think over the Confession of Faith a bit,” Engels wrote to Marx in November 1847. “I believe we had better drop the catechism form and call the thing: Communist Manifesto.”²²

Even then, the document was, for these proud atheists, very much a catechetical confession of faith for communists. Their communism became their religion, even as they scoffed at religion as something for superstitious idiots. Truly, their manifesto was and became their catechism—their bible.

At a more material level, one might better accuse communists of fashioning a golden calf than channeling an unclean spirit. What communists effectively bowed down to was just that: a material idol forged and focused on money, property, gold. It was not about the soul. The key to the communist-Marxist utopia would be economics. Solve the economic problem, the communists believed, and you would solve the human problem.

Why such an economic goal was ever perceived by any group as the pinnacle of human development is a darned good question. To most people, economics and class simply are not that monumentally important. Sure, a roof over one’s head and food and financial security are obviously important, especially for those lacking basic necessities; no one denies that. Still, for most individuals, economics is not the centerpiece of existence. To communists and many socialists, however, this is the alpha and omega. They speak as if man truly does live by bread alone; if society resolves, say, “economic inequality,” levels all incomes to the same dollar number, or more fully redistributes wealth, then something closer to heaven on earth can follow. As Pope Benedict XVI said, the fatal flaw of communists and socialists is that they had their anthropology wrong. They did not adequately understand man. As Augustine said, we all have a God-shaped vacuum that God alone can fill; not a dollar-signed vacuum. We crave the divine manna of heaven.

Atheist communists and socialists have always mistakenly felt that the answers to man’s miseries are found not in God (the existence of which they deny) but in economic materialism. It is so ironic that communists and socialists blast the wealthy for being allegedly obsessed with money and material things when, in fact, communists and socialists are obsessed with money and material things. But as most rich people learn, money does not buy happiness. Humans desire more than that. How profound that Jesus told Satan that man does not live on bread alone. As the two debated, the Living Bread told the tempter that man lives by every word from the mouth of God. Marx took not the side of Christ on that one. Of course, Marx rejected Christ in total. Communists are atheists after all.

Communists are also, curiously, utopians—secular utopians. They sought a heaven on earth—for them, an earth without religion. They did so without realizing that utopia is not only elusive but such a literal self-contradiction that it does not exist. The Greek roots of the word are ou topos, or “no place.” In other words, there is no utopia, at least not in this world and realm. And yet, communists would pursue this no place with religious-like zeal.

In his classic Private Property and Communism (1844), Marx grandiosely exclaimed that “Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution.”²³ Few ideologies, or ideologues, have been so boastful. In his German Ideology (1845), Marx fantasized, “In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.”²⁴

That is a picture of utopia. And the Manifesto was a utopian treatise.

Marx and Engels published their Communist Manifesto in 1848 as the official programmatic statement of the Communist Party (or Communist League) outlining exactly what communists believed and planned to pursue. That is what the Communist Manifesto really was—namely, a manifesto for the party which, at that point, had lacked a single written statement laying out communist beliefs.

Notably, usage of the word “communism” preceded the Communist Manifesto, as Marx and Engels were able to refer to it in the book as something that already existed (though not by long) and was known to certain people. It is possible that they coined the term themselves in Paris a few years before the publication of their Manifesto, but pinning that down is elusive; they certainly, however, popularized the term. Quite fittingly, Marx and Engels met in August 1844 in the left-wing looney bin that was and is Paris, where Marx a year earlier had already moved with his wife and begun studying the French Revolution and various utopian socialists, while attending workers’ meetings and engaging in other fanciful leftist functions.²⁵

Marx envisioned an apocalyptic revolution leading to the overthrow of capitalism by the impoverished working class, the common people, the masses—the so-called “proletariat.” The stage in the revolutionary process immediately following this overthrow would be that of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. That “dictatorship” would be a waystation on the road to the ultimate utopian goal of a “classless society.” The state, in the process, would be abolished; it would die out; it would “wither away.” With a classless society, class antagonisms would hence disappear, as would conflict (including armed conflict), as would economic inequality, as would social inequality, and peace and harmony would follow. Society would evolve through dialectical stages: from feudalism to capitalism to socialism to communism.

Note that final transition: from socialism to communism. When asked to define the difference between socialism and communism, Marion Smith, director of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, likes to say that Christians go to heaven, whereas socialists go to communism. That is indeed the transitionary process, and Smith’s language is apt, given that the communist views full communism as a sort of New Jerusalem. The atheistic communist, whether realizing it or not, subscribes or aspires to a messianic vision.

Moreover, Marx and Engels insisted, this wondrous socialism would need to sweep the planet in order to work. It had to be worldwide. That was the plan, and that is no small thing. Nonetheless, Marx and Engels, and then Lenin and Stalin and a train of others still to this day, felt it could happen. It was the ultimate utopian pipedream.

And yet, the plan was not so dreamy as to lack any specificity. To the contrary, Marx and Engel had a ten-point plan. Here it is, taken verbatim from their manifesto:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.

4. Confiscation of all property of emigrants and rebels.

5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal obligation of all to work.…

9. … gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equitable distribution of the population over the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools.

Marx and Engels demanded that such a ten-point program be implemented not merely in one nation but throughout all nations of the world. Many subsequent socialists, beginning with Vladimir Lenin and his Bolsheviks in 1917, worked from that blueprint.

Of course, Marx and Lenin and the boys knew that terror would be necessary to implement such a truly radical, totalitarian ideology. After all, their philosophy demanded an unequivocal rejection of most basic rights, including property. Stated Marx, “The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”

Many Marxists and socialists and “democratic socialists” today fuss over the extent to which Marx wanted to remove or limit property, but in the Manifesto, he (and Engels) doubled down. “You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property,” they wrote. “But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population.” And then this: “In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.”

That is truly radical, revolutionary. It constitutes nothing less than a fundamental transformation of human nature.

The rejection of such a natural if not sacred right violates the most basic precepts of all peoples, from the cave to the courthouse, from Judeo-Christian thinking to the most innate urges of primitive tribes. God’s commandment Thou shalt not steal implies a right to property. Marx was not oblivious to just how radical his vision was. He himself acknowledged that his views stood undeniably contrary to the “social and political order of things.” Communism, he and Engels wrote in their Manifesto, not only seeks to “abolish the present state of things” but represents “the most radical rupture in traditional relations.” They knew what they were advocating; this was a revolution, touching on everything from property to the family. “Abolition of the family!” they wrote with an exclamation. “Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the communists.”²⁶

Again, look at just a few of the specific policy recommendations in the ten-point plan of the Manifesto, which included “abolition of property in land” (point 1), “a heavy progressive or graduated income tax” (point 2), “abolition of all right of inheritance” (point 3), “centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly” (point 5), “centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state” (point 6), and a breathtaking call for “gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equitable distribution of the population over the country” (point 9). Chew that one over: Marx and Engels and friends wanted to distribute not only your property but you yourself.

If that is not a ready-made recipe for coercion and despotism, then what is?

Indeed, Marx and Engels willingly conceded that this program would require despotism. They stated of their ten points, “Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads.”

Of course, it cannot. Human beings would not give up such fundamental liberties without resistance. Seizing property alone would require a terrible fight, prompting implementers to use their guns and gulags. This is a vision that necessitates prison camps.

Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, and a long line of implementers candidly admitted that for...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Notes on Style
• Preface: “The Dance of Death”: The Communist Killing Machine
• Part 1: The Specter
• Part 2: Karl Marx
• Part 3: The Bolshevik War on Religion and the Church’s Resistance
• Part 4: Infiltration and Manipulation
• Part 5: They Are Legion
• Part 6: Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• Endnotes
• Index