“In the year 2017, one hundred years after the Bolshevik Revolution, scaffolding is covering the Lenin Mausoleum on the former Red Square, now renamed Freedom Square. The scaffolding is masking the reconstruction of the mausoleum into the entrance to an underground parking garage designed to accommodate the masses of tourists visiting the recently opened permanent exhibit in the Kremlin entitled ‘One Hundred Wasted Years – Fifty Million Wasted Lives.’”
Did you read that news item in your local newspaper or hear about it online or on TV? Not likely, seeing that it was written twenty-eight years ago by Zbigniew Brzezinski, former Assistant for National Security Affairs to President Jimmy Carter. In his 1989 classic book, The Grand Failure – The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century (New York: Collier Books, p. 243), Brzezinski predicted that the then still existing Soviet Union and its failed system of Communism were on the verge of total collapse.
Brzezinski was right as we related in part one of this two part article. However, as of this writing, it’s still called Red Square (the Russian word for “Red” is the same as the word for “Beautiful”). Likewise, no underground parking garage has replaced Lenin’s mausoleum in Moscow. Nonetheless, by the end of the 20th Century, communism and its philosophical basis, Marxism, as Ronald Reagan had predicted, for all practical purposes, was consigned to the “ash heap of history.” (See part one at http://www.marketfaith.org/2016/12/the-legacy-of-communism-part-1-the-history-of-a-human-disaster)
That being said, does it mean that Marxism or Communism are totally gone? Not at all. As we indicated in part one, at least five major countries still remain Communist, and many individuals, even in the USA, still affirm the Marxist view of history and economics. In this part we will examine and critique the tenets of classical Marxism from both secular and Christian perspectives.
The man most responsible for the creation of communism as a system of thought was Karl Marx. Marx was born in 1818 in Trier, Germany. His family was Jewish, but when he was a small boy they converted to Protestantism. As a youth Marx rejected all religion and studied philosophy and economics. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Jena.
Marx became fascinated with the philosophical ideas of G.W.F. Hegel. Hegel’s worldview was that the mind (equivalent to the divine) is the only true reality, and that matter is only an illusion of the processes of the mind. You may recognize this as similar to the concepts of Far Eastern Thought. Hegel developed a pattern for thinking and logical historical progress called the “dialectic.” Hegel asserted that, in that process, every reasonable mental proposition can be termed as a “thesis.” He said that, eventually, an opposing idea, which he called an “anti-thesis,” would challenge the original thesis. Eventually, the two opposing propositions would merge and form a “synthesis.” The synthesis would then establish a new thesis which would itself be challenged by a new anti-thesis, leading to another synthesis, and so on, in perpetuity. The theory stated that, eventually, as all ideas continued to synthesize and converge, the mind would be rid of all material confines, and perfect truth and divinity would be realized.
Marx was intrigued by Hegel’s theories. However, he absolutely rejected the metaphysical and spiritual dimensions of his thought. Marx was steeped in the naturalistic worldview that all that exists is the material universe of time, space, matter, and energy. In his view, it is the mind or spirit that is an illusion. So, Marx applied Hegel’s dialectic logic to history in what he called Dialectical Materialism. In this process, it is the ongoing conflicts, not of ideas but of economic forces, that eventually and inevitably will bring about a perfect society. So in Marx’s philosophy, it is economics that absolutely determines human history.
That conflict, Marx said, will not be peaceful. Society will pass through various economic stages, and when it arrives at a stage of industrialization a major confrontation will occur between the masses of workers (the Proletariat) and the owner/manager capitalist class (the Bourgeoisie). This conflict will, of necessity, be a violent revolution, since the workers will have to fight to overthrow the capitalists and take over the means of production. This will then lead to a form of Socialism in which people’s motivations will no longer be profit, but cooperation. In time, according the Marx’s theory, as society continues to progress according to Dialectical Materialism, it will inevitably rise to a level wherein people’s cooperative instincts are such that government will no longer be needed.
This is the ultimate goal: a perfect Communist (communal) society. Ultimately Marxists believe that Communism will eventually do the following: (1) “produce higher forms of social life; (2) abolish the exploitation of man by man; (3) eliminate the exploitation by foreign capital; (4) do away with all social injustice; (5) eliminate social plagues – unemployment, limited education, absence of medical care, homelessness; (6) ensure the victory of rationalism over all forms of irrationalism” (Brzezinski, p. 124). It is important to understand that for committed Marxists and Communists, this progressive movement of history to a paradisiacal end is not just a hope or conjecture. For them, it is absolutely and undeniably inevitable. They consider Marxism to be based on confirmed laws of nature and science. In this sense, Marxism is as dogmatic as any religion, and its true believers regard any action, including mass murder, as moral if it furthers their cause.
The first society to try and institute Marx’s theories into actual practice was Russia in 1917, led by Vladimir Lenin. Lenin, however, added to Marx’s doctrines the idea that the revolution would not happen spontaneously, but required the efforts of a force of hardcore professionals. He called these revolutionaries the Vanguard of the Revolution. He declared that they would, after the revolution, need to establish a temporary “dictatorship of the proletariat” to give direction in society’s rise to communism. He put this into action when his Communist Party took control of the Russian government in October of 1917. It did not take long for Lenin to use terror to establish a totalitarian state. He also violently murdered those who opposed him, as well as those he regarded as capitalists. We have already traced, in part one, the horrible aftermath of the birth and spread of communism in the 20th century.
So what do we say about all of this? First, from a purely secular orientation, several obvious flaws in the Marxist view of history are evident. For example, most of the predictions Marx made for the 20th Century did not come to pass. There was no worldwide revolution by the workers in industrialized states. In fact, except for Russia, and perhaps China, those countries that where communist nearly all had it imposed on them by external military power. Likewise, economic and social progress, and the quality of the lives of common people, in the countries under Communist control acutely lagged behind those of the capitalist Western Democracies.
Another error of Marxism is the assumption all of human history can be explained in terms of economic laws. Much that mankind has done in history has no obvious basis in economic determinism. Think of the great works of art and science that were done simply for their own sakes, or for the good of mankind. Likewise, much of the evil in history was based on nothing more than blind hate and prejudice.
From a Christian perspective, Marxism has several basic philosophical defects. For instance, Marx’s belief that humanity could be conditioned to live together in harmony is in total contradiction to the Christian doctrine of original sin. Marx thought that by eliminating private property and the profit motive, people would naturally become progressively better, and eventually perfect. The Bible, however, says mankind’s problem does not originate with any outward condition. Though it may be intensified under difficult circumstances, humanity’s basic nature is sinful. Just changing the environment of society, or providing all material needs, will not change the inner human rebellion against God. That requires a rebirth by faith in Jesus Christ.
This highlights one other critical difference between Communism and Christianity. Communism, with all its talk of a perfect future society, in reality offers no hope for the individual. If all that exists is matter, then death is the absolute end. Thus, all those who fought and died for the cause of Communism can never enjoy any of the benefits it claims to provide in the perfect world to come.
Christianity (unlike Communism) does not claim that it can or will change the world to a perfect place. That will happen only when Christ Himself returns to earth to establish His eternal Kingdom on earth and in heaven. In that case, all believers of all time who have put there faith in Him will be resurrected from the dead and will enjoy life forever in God’s presence. It will be a perfect world under the control of a perfect Lord. That’s a hope we can look forward to!
© 2017 Tal Davis