The ghost of Karl Marx has been hovering lately.
Though often disguised, the vapory silhouette of a bearded man from the 1800s, whose ideas have led to countless human atrocities, still haunts, aiming to dismantle all social and political structures and erase God.
Despite resurging popularity, Marxism aligns more with Satan than Savior. A recent EWTN radio conversation between Fr. Mitch Pacwa and Dr. Paul Kengor, author of “The Devil and Karl Marx,” suggests that today’s civil unrest predominantly pours from this dangerous ideology.
We’d be wise to awaken to this floating phantom. A regime responsible for upwards of 100 million deaths can’t be minimized.
Pacwa said that when the Berlin Wall fell, close-out sales on statues of Communist leaders sprang up everywhere. “Well,” Kengor remarked, “there’d probably be some buyers now.”
Why Marx hasn’t been canceled mystifies Kengor. His “hideous views” on religion notwithstanding, he said, Marx held “vile racial views,” calling his son-in-law Paul, of African American heritage, the n-word, and “a degree nearer to the rest of the animal kingdom” than most.
Marx impregnated the family nursemaid, refusing to claim the child, and siphoned income from others. His main enabler, Friedrich Engels, once called him “the monster of 10,000 devils.”
His “Communist Manifesto” promotes the abolition of private property, the family, income tax, and inheritance – all things Marx himself enjoyed.
Illustrating the sour fruits of this ideology, Kengor referenced a former student whose Cuban aunt was forbade eating mangos from the state-owned tree in her yard. And in Mao’s China, “the only smoke that could emanate was from a collective kitchen.”
The goal, Kengor said, is to eliminate anyone not belonging to an “approved class.”
And when Pacwa referenced Soviet Russia Communist Nikolai Bukharin’s call for religion’s extermination “at the tip of the bayonet,” Kengor nodded, noting that “in order to create their utopia without religion,” Communist leaders “knew they needed to take down the Judeo-Christian foundation.”
Communism, which promotes group conflict to advance society, defies Christian charity, Pacwa said. “Pitting one group against another contradicts Christian ideals…of cherishing and loving your neighbor.”
Kengor explained, “Marxism identifies a victim group, which serves as the ultimate redeemer group.” He quoted Marx’s favorite line: “‘Everything that exists deserves to perish’…a credo for his ideology wrought upon the world.”
“Since you cannot experience any kind of redemption,” Pacwa added, “…all reality must be destroyed.”
To those believing Marx honorable, Kengor warned, “This guy wanted to burn down the house. And he would be standing there in the middle of the embers, fists in the air, saying, ‘Now we’re ready to move forward!’ ”
Pacwa added that though Marx’s criticism against “a very nasty situation of the Industrial Age” was fair, his solution wasn’t.
“If you want to help your fellow man,” Kengor concluded, quoting Pope Pius XI, “follow Jesus, not an imperialistic, atheistic philosophy that rejects God, misunderstands human nature” and “calls for a complete redoing of the entire order.”
Our choice? It’s either Marx’s malicious madness or God’s guiding goodness.
[For the sake of having a repository for my newspaper columns and articles, I reprint them here, with permission, a week after their run date. The preceding ran in The Forum newspaper on Oct. 19, 2020.]
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