Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

Karl Marx is famous for saying, “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”–a statement of such breathtaking stupidity, one would have to search out a sitting member of the United States Congress for a more inane utterance. Marx then closed out his highly unreadable Communist Manifesto by telling the working class they had nothing to lose but their chains, which was not quite true, for they also had their lives to lose. Stalin and Mao did not fail to oblige.

Like Charles Darwin, Marx is unavoidable as a major influence. Indeed, leftism simply is Marxism, and all subsequent leftist thinkers are greater or lesser disciples of the German philosopher. The primary trope of leftist sociology is Marx’s theory of victimhood, while the basic structure of leftist ethics is the zero-sum enmity between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. It was later provocateurs who created the category of the meta-proletariat, the universal victim who spans the many genres of oppression–sexual, gender, political, social, religious, legal, linguistic, etc., and who resembles a sort of Platonic form more than a historical reality.

Marxism, despite its obvious and toxic legacy, can be difficult to analyze and frustrating to refute, firstly because of its incoherence, and secondly because, despite its pedigree of predictive failures, its proponents remain fanatically loyal. This is due to the powerful manner in which Marx’s philosophy satisfies the unquenchable and basic human urge to resent, to covet, to seek revenge. Marxism, notwithstanding its inability to deliver the workers’ paradise, jives too well with the worst of human nature, and in that sense, it is probably impossible to dispense with.

The poor we will always have with us, said Christ.

As a matter of fact, I am inclined to see Marxism as a virulent Christian heresy. Should one make the very healthy decision not to read Karl Marx, the easiest way of understanding him is to lift the beatitude, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall inherit the earth”, and, due to Marx’s being a materialist, simply eliminate “in spirit” from Christ’s blessing. Afterwards, we are left with “Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the earth”, which was precisely what Marx believed.

Without the Christian metaphysic, naturally, the insight becomes entirely silly. Why there should be anything blessed about poverty per se is baffling, though, sometime later, another silly Marxist transformed the already vacuous statement into an even more vacuous statement along these lines: “Blessed are they who lack, for they shall inherit society.”

NB: They who lack a voice, they who lack a portion of the center square, they who lack resources, communities that lack opportunities for equality in employment or education as compared with other communities, they who lack a home within their “bodies assigned at birth”. . . .

It is an equally bastardized Christian insight which fuels the universal redistribution agenda of Marxist politicians. After all, it was Christ who told the rich young man, “Go, sell everything you have, and give the money to the poor”; if this is not the same as “Take everything the rich have by force, and give it the poor”, the sentiments are at least distant relatives, if one considers the dangerous absence of charity among Marxist doctrines. It must be remembered that Marxism is a philosophy of ends more than means; voluntarily selling everything to the poor and involuntarily having one’s possessions redistributed to the poor differ as means, but the end result is identical: the poor have the rich’s possessions.

Consider, as an example, the raping of female spaces, bodies, and identities by viciously ill adult men, i.e. transgender women. This, in the eyes of the Marxist heretic, is a redemptive act of justice. It is a redistribution of female identity and venue–both precious resources–to those who have historically lacked those resources. Even childbirth is denied to women through new turns of language such as “birthing people” or “inseminated individuals”. It is the selling of everything belonging to women and giving to “the poor”, the transgenders, they who “have not” womanhood.

Both Marxism and Christianity are also historically eschatological, and the left has borrowed two ultra-powerful historical doctrines from Christianity. The first is that of “the effects of sin”; the Christian would say that even after a sinner has confessed his sins and received forgiveness and grace, concupiscence remains. A man who lusts continually after women in the privacy of his mind and binges pornography, even after he has admitted this before others, been absolved, and turned away from the evil, will still be tempted to lust. Likewise, his ability to relate properly to another, his ability to refrain from treating her as an object, his ability to restrain his passions and therefore be self-sacrificing and faithful in a relationship, will be severely damaged. He will need to take remedial action to heal his psyche and his body.

In a similar way, consider the term “the effects of slavery”: the exact point of the Marxist is that the damage of slavery remains, even if the act itself has ceased. The harm done to black culture, psychology, and resources after centuries of enslavement is extensive and requires remedial social measures. Just as the Christian would call upon a dispensation of grace which aids the healing of the sinner, the Marxist, by definition an atheist, is drawn to a new definition of grace: state action on behalf of the oppressed.

The second notion pilfered from Christianity is “universal salvation”, wherein Christ did not die merely for sins present and future, but also for sins of the past. The Marxist discourse is continually engaged in digging up corpses and trying them for grave offenses and high crimes. The Marxist project is not merely to save the oppressed of today, or even of tomorrow, but yesterday’s victims as well. The Marxist desires to redeem history, and therefore to reconstruct it, re-enact it, and punish those who, in the present moment, are beneficiaries of historical misdemeanors. It is this final purification of history through narrative, this falsification of the past so that the perpetual victim is transformed into the ultimate victor, wherein historical salvation is effected.

Returning to the definition of grace as state action on behalf of the oppressed, we are capable of discerning the Left’s deep discomfort with the democratic empowerment of their ideological enemies, as well as Marxists’ strong penchant for violence. President Trump’s decimation of federal funds for DEI is a perfect case example, for, in the eyes of the Marxist, this certainly has nothing to do with reigning in irresponsible government spending, but neither is it merely an immoral use of lawful executive action. Rather, the termination of DEI is the abandonment of the oppressed, leaving them graceless, with no advocate, no dispenser of privileges meant to remove the long-suffered disfigurement of their social standing and equality.

In the mind of the Marxist, the ending of DEI is not less catastrophic than if, in the mind of the believer, God were to abandon his creatures to the tyranny of sin.

Coercive power is the only way to implement justice (the uplifting of the proletariat), since there is only the will-to-power and its aesthetic disguises (truth, beauty, merit, success, goodness). Therefore, to allow power to fall into the hands of one’s enemies, even through democratic means, is to abandon the proletariat to increased denigration and oppression.

The centrality of this in Marxist activism cannot be overstated. There is no situation which validates or legitimizes the possession of power by the overlord. To suggest that elections somehow sanction violence against the proletariat simply because a bourgeoisie billionaire was voted in by a non-woke public is both repulsive and evil. Donald Trump is just as intolerable as president now than if he had staged a military coup.

In the scenario that one’s enemies do assume power, the most responsible and virtuous approach is to undermine state action and stability through drastic and widespread brutality. As I have written elsewhere, blowing up Teslas, vandalizing government property, and even physically assaulting undesirable people under the current conditions become acts of eloquence and even kindness toward the proletariat. Like Christ, isolated from all of his other teachings, the Marxist came to bring fire and the sword. Under the boot of the tyrant, violence is the only efficacious method, and certainly the quickest way to ensure the state falls into the right hands again, the hands of those who will direct the state to resume dispensation of grace (i.e. action on behalf of the victim).

Perhaps, then it is fitting to leave the reader with a religious idiom –  four anti-Beatitudes, or curses- which capture, if not the thought of Marx, certainly his unholy spirit. Here are the epitaphs of hundreds of millions of Russians, Chinese, Vietnamese, Cubans, and others whose nations fell prey to Marxism and its Satanic heresy:

Blessed are the poor, for they are dissatisfied, and want blood.

Blessed is the lamb, who has blood that can be shed.

Blessed are those who accept our ideology meekly, for they shall inherit the earth: though, less of the earth than initially promised.

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst, for they received no food, they received no water, but they received righteousness, for they are dead.

*****

Image credit: Grok Image Generator