The Origins and Goals of Marxism
Our Deadly Enemy, the Source of Much Misery On Earth
It is not every day that one is struck by an epiphany which causes multiple facets of knowledge to gel into a cohesive understanding. Today is one of those days. A friend sent me an article entitled, “Why Marxist organizations like BLM [Black Lives Matter] seek to dismantle the ‘Western nuclear family,’” written by Bradley Thomas, and after reading this short paper the reasons suddenly coalesced as to why Marxism not only wants to destroy the nuclear family, but also why this evil social construct seeks to remove all private property, private ownership of businesses, Biblical beliefs, and sexual morality.
Thomas’ paper points out the reasons that Communism must destroy the traditional patriarchal family because this makes it easier to abolish private property as well. The book The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, written in 1884 by Frederick Engels — a lifelong benefactor and collaborator with Karl Marx — traces back the Marxist view of the development of the Western family. Initially, according to Engels, humanity lived in a cave-man style, hunter-gatherer, savage society in which, “… unrestricted sexual intercourse existed within a tribe so that every woman belonged to every man, and vice versa.”
Under such conditions, Engels stated that “It is uncertain who is the father of the child, but certain who is the mother.” Thus, only the female lineage could be ascertained, so women were consequentially held in high respect, amounting to, a woman-dominated, rulership. Also, Engels claimed that tribes were subdivided into smaller sub-tribes called gentes, a sort of primitive extended family. These gentes included only people who descended from the same ancestor, which would be females, since only they could be tied to the children.
While men and women did tend to pair off for a time, their license to procreate with others was the rule, but, according to Engels, men had to strictly choose mates within their tribe, but outside of their own gent. Marriage at this stage of human development was a communal affair, men, and women changing partners regularly.
As Bradley Thomas stated, “Because mothers were the only parents who could be determined with certainty, and the smaller gentes were arranged around the mother’s relations, early family units were very maternal in nature, and maternal laws regarding rights and duties for childrearing and inheritance were the custom.”
Transition to the “Pairing Family,” According to Engels
This sexual free-for-all within tribal and gentes units was the state of affairs for thousands of years, according to Engels, but over time he claimed that there was a gradual transition to the “pairing family,” in which a man claimed a principle wife among the many with whom he cohabited. Engels claimed that this was in no small part due to the gentes within the tribes developing more and more classes of relations who have disallowed marriage to others within their gentes. As a result, group marriage became more difficult, if not impossible, and thereafter ascended the pairing family system.
Quoting the missionary Arthur Wright, who worked among the Seneca Indians, Engels noted that, “The female part generally ruled the house… The women were the dominating power in the clans and everywhere else.” Within such a communistic society as this, the administration of household functions by women was just as important as the obtaining of food by men in the social structure of the community.
Engels then went on to relate how ancient society evolved from a system of savagery to the development of tools for war and pastoral living — farming and animal domestication. While the gentes likely owned these tools and animals, private ownership of these means of survival likely began to develop. As men tended flocks and cultivated land, their ownership of the means of survival marked the passage of the communistic order to the privately-owned order of the means of production and property.
This change brought about, according to Engels, a revolution in the family and the power of the men and women. “All of the surplus now resulting from production fell to the share of the man. The woman shared in its fruition, but she could not claim its ownership.” Thus, the roles of rulership in the home and the production unit, which once revolved around the woman, now fell upon the man: their roles became reversed. Along with this reversal in roles came the transition from the pairing family to the monogamous family.
With men now reigning as the superior of the two, Engels stated that the woman’s right to inheritance was overthrown, which he described as “the historic defeat of the female sex.” Moreover, he claimed that because of the transition to the male-dominated patriarchy, private property, and the man’s claim over it emerged.
Overcoming the Patriarchy, According Engels
It is now apparent that Engels and Marx believed that the nuclear family of man, wife, and family ran counter to a “better” communistic, ancient household structure which they believed existed millennia ago. Frederick Engels summarized the situation as follows.
“In the great majority of cases, the man has to earn a living and to support his family, at least among the possessing classes. He thereby obtains a superior position that has no need for any legal special privilege. In the family, he is the bourgeois, the woman represents the proletariat.”
Within an industrial society the family unit, rather than the collective tribe, becomes supreme. Engels stated that the overthrow of the dominance of men can come only by abolishing private property, which property has given rise to the patriarchy.
By eliminating private property, Bradly Thomas summarized what the new social arrangement envisioned by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels would be like.
“The care and education of, children, becomes a public matter. Society cares equally well for all children, legal or illegal. This removed the care about the ‘consequences’ which now forms the essential social factor — moral and economic — hindering a girl to surrender unconditionally to the loving man.”
A Brief Overview of the Communist Agenda
It is highly instructive to examine the platform of the Communist Party in the words of the founders, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. In order for the party to take over the political system of Western nations, a series of actions were proposed in the Manifesto of the Communist Party, written by these two men in 1848. Here are the ten planks of that platform as recorded in the 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 rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all 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 liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production.
The philosophy of Communism is focused on five core ideas, according to AFP. Karl Marx’s work “can be explained in five minutes, five hours, in five years or in a half-century,” wrote French political thinker Raymond Aron. A utopian vision of a just society for some, a blueprint for totalitarian regimes for others, Marxist thought is laid out in the Communist Manifesto and the three-volume Das Kapital.
1. Class struggle. “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle.” Marx believed that humanity’s core conflict rages between the ruling class, or bourgeoisie, that controls the means of production such as factories, farms, and mines, and the working class (proletariat), which is forced to sell their labor. According to Marx, this conflict at the heart of capitalism — of slaves against masters, serfs against landlords, workers against bosses — would inevitably cause it to self-destruct, to be followed by socialism and eventually communism.
2. Dictatorship of the proletariat. This idea — coined by early socialist revolutionary Joseph Weydemeyer and adopted by Marx and Engels — refers to the goal of the working class gaining control of political power. It is the stage of transition from capitalism to communism where the means of production pass from private to collective ownership while the state still exists. The concept, including suppressing “counter-revolutionaries,” was proclaimed by the Russian Bolsheviks in 1918. Vladimir Lenin wrote that it is “won and maintained by the use of violence,” signaling the authoritarian drift that began after Russia’s 1917 October Revolution.
3. Communism. The goal was the conquest of political power by workers, the abolition of private property, and the eventual establishment of a classless and stateless communist society. According to Marx’s theory of historical materialism, societies pass through six states — primitive communism, slave society, feudalism, capitalism, socialism, and finally global, stateless communism. In reality, the abolition of private property and the collectivization of land resulted in millions of deaths, especially under Russia’s Joseph Stalin and China’s Mao Zedong.
4. Internationalism. “Workers of the world unite!” is the famous rallying cry that concludes the Manifesto and seeks to create a political structure that transcends national borders. The idea lay at the heart of Soviet internationalism, uniting the destiny of countries as geographically distant as the USSR, Vietnam, and Cuba, and revolutionary groups including the Colombian FARC or the Kurdish Workers’ Party PKK, as well as anti-globalization movements.
5. Opiate of the people. Marx believed that religion, like a drug, helps the exploited to suppress their immediate pain and misery with pleasant illusions, to the benefit of their oppressors. Marx wrote, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” The idea was used to justify the brutal purges of religions in Russia, China, and across eastern Europe. Some scholars point out that Marx saw religion as only one of many elements explaining the enslavement of the proletariat, and may have been surprised to see radical atheism become a core tenet of communist regimes, for atheism itself is a religion.
The Current Status of Things
With this background of Communism’s origins — though it surely is not new in terms of mankind’s history on earth, for Solomon said: “There is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9) — which according to Frederick Engels originated with primitive violent society when women were societal leaders and men fathered children promiscuously within subtribes and was a superior arrangement of civilization … let us see how this system of government and societal structure is faring in today’s world. The ten points mentioned earlier in the Communist Manifesto are rooted in attempts to get back to this supposed utopian world before the patriarchal form of society developed. To what degree have these ideas infiltrated today’s world?
Engel’s Primitive Societal View
Primitive society
* Matriarchy
* Free sex, no marriage
* Land held in common
Today’s world
* Women’s Liberation and similar groups (Isaiah 3:12. “As for My people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them.”)
* The ”new morality,” do what makes you feel good, create your own laws
* Cohabitation very common
The Communist Manifesto recommendations to overturn Western civilization
Planks in the platform
1. Abolition of private landholdings, and rents of land for public purposes
2. Heavy progressive income tax
3. Abolition of rights of inheritance
4. Confiscation of the property of emigrants and rebels
5. Centralization of credit to the State, using a national bank
6. Centralization of communication and transport with the State
7. Extension of factory and instruments of production owned by the State; bringing waste-lands into production, and a common soil improvement plan
8. Equal liability of all to work, and the creation of industrial armies, especially for agriculture
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing, and a more equal distribution of the population over the country
10. Free education for children in public schools, the abolition of child labor, and the combination of education with industry
Today’s world
1. Real estate taxes (pay the taxes or lose your property), land condemnation proceedings, land zoning laws
2. The income tax law was passed in 1913 and has increased over the years at the national, state, and local levels. Tax rates generally progress as income increases.
3. Inheritance taxes are common.
4. Strict laws exist that limit moving wealth out of countries; witness South Africa in particular.
5. In 1913 the Federal Reserve System was established, which has created a Great Depression and other great hardships in the U.S.
6. Most radio, television, and print media are controlled by a very few left-wing, Communistic corporations that unabashedly proclaim a Marxist agenda. This includes films and entertainment that are largely controlled by the same Marxist elements.
7. Factories and corporations are controlled by a myriad of state regulations, with executives in the corporate world and in government changing places regularly; thus, the government and industry are closely tied, a form of fascism. Agriculture is also tied to regulations, but seldom for the betterment of the land.
8. This plank has not worked well in the U.S., since so many people remain unemployed, many by choice. There are no “industrial armies” per se since automation has replaced labor in factories and on the land.
9. Agriculture is intrinsically tied to manufacturing for major commodities such as corn, soybeans, wheat, barley, sugar cane, and other crops. However, cities have grown exponentially, sweeping the countryside of its many people and, their wealth for the sake of corporate control. Pesticides, herbicides, commercial fertilizers, petroleum, and machine manufacturers power the wheels of crop production systems worldwide.
10. Public education has been compulsory for decades in most nations, and much of it is designed to train tradesmen, especially in community colleges. Child “sweatshop” labor still continues in some countries. Much of U.S. public education is designed to “dumb down” students and make them unaware of historical truths and Godly principles, designing them as cookie-cutter robots who will echo the party line of political elites. Academic freedom is highly discouraged.
Communism’s five major planks
Planks in the platform
1. Class struggle. The clash between the bourgeois (ruling class) and proletariat (working class)
2. Dictatorship of the proletariat. The attempt to make the working class the controller of political power
3. Communism. The conquest of political power by workers, the abolition of private property, and the establishment of a classless, sateless society
4. Internationalism. Uniting the destinies of countries all over the world by creating a political structure that transcends national borders
5. Religion is the opiate of the people. Religion and belief in God disbanded, in favor of the State
Today’s world
1. Labor unions were formed to try and resolve conflicts between workers and management, but many became Communist fronts to foment disruption and discontentment of workers. High taxes and the moving of people from the farm to the cities, and the abuse of welfare programs, raised unemployment and classism: white versus black, rich versus poor, blue-collar versus white-collar, and on the list goes.
2. While in a sense the power vested in workers is a good idea — some companies give shares to the workers to improve incentive and productivity — the intent of Communists is to wrest control of the country’s leadership through violence and intimidation of peaceful methods, leading to the anarchistic methods of Antifa and BLM rioters.
3. Private property is under assault through taxation and various laws, and behind-the-scenes wealthy tycoons (George Soros, Bill Gates, etc.) are investing in the media and agitators like BLM and Antifa to foment violence and anarchy, from which they hope to allow the overturning of republics and democracies.
4. The United Nations and many political leaders are championing a one-world government (New World Order), that places all nations under common leadership and erases national borders. Free immigration is encouraged, as is today being touted by Democrat and United Nations leaders, especially for the U. S. southern border. These movements all erode national sovereignty and Constitutional integrity.
5. Materialism, public education, and spineless Biblical teachings have combined to reduce or eliminate faith and commitment to the Creator and His laws, such that today the belief in God’s existence and the veracity of the Bible are at all-time lows. Many people do indeed worship the State.
The Cause of It All
It is easy to pinpoint the source of this Communist effort to overthrow the nuclear family and the goals of Communism: Satan the Devil. He is the Prince of the power of the air (II Corinthians 4:4, Ephesians 2:2), the one who strives to divide and conquer, and a liar and murder (John 8:44). He is the cause of all this mayhem, for He hates God’s great plan to populate the earth with humans made in His image (Genesis 1:26), whose destiny as brothers of Jesus Christ (Romans 8:29) is to raise up a royal priesthood from the “imagers,” who will reign for a thousand years on earth, and make it a wonderful, utopian Garden of Eden (Revelation 5:10; 20:6), replacing Satan and his minions who disqualified themselves by sinning even before Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden.
Nearly everything that Marx and Engels promoted is in direct opposition to the Eternal’s plan and laws.
l We are to obey the Creator God, not the governments of man when they dictate that you are to disobey God.
“Then Jesus said to him, ‘Away with you, Satan!’ For it is written, “You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve”“ (Matthew 4:10).
l We are to build strong families having one husband married to one wife, bound together for life, raising up many children in the fear of God.
“So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth’”(Genesis 1:27-28).
“And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man. And Adam said: ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.’ Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:21-24).
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up” (Deuteronomy 6:5-7)
“Your have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ “But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you, for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. Furthermore it has been said, “Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.” ‘But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery’” (Matthew 5:27-32).
“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise: that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.” (Ephesians 6:1-3).
Moreover, the prophecy that men would rule over women, as Genesis 3:16 predicted, is not the prescription for marriages today. The husband and wife are to be co-inheritors of eternal life in the properly ordered household, as Ephesians 5:21-33 so aptly points out..
l People are to live on their own land, a possession forever.
“And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for you, and each of you shall return to his possession, and each of you shall return to his family.” (Leviticus 25:10).
l We are to share what we have with the needy, but have personal wealth through private endeavors to provide that assistance.
“Give to everyone who asks of you. And from him who takes away your goods do not ask them back” (Luke 6:30).
“If one of your brethren becomes poor, and falls into poverty among you, then you shall help him, like a stranger or a sojourner, that he may live with you” (Leviticus 25:35).
“Let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give him who has need” (Ephesians 4:28).
“Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another; not lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord; rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer; distributing to the needs of the saints, given to hospitality” (Romans 12:10-13).
“Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’ Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, “Lord when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? Or when did we see You sick or in prison, and come to You?” And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these, My brethren, you did it to Me.’” (Matthew 25:34-40).
One cannot claim that at the first Pentecost there was a Communist system, as we read in Acts 2:44-46:
“Now all who believed were together, and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need. So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart …”
These people were filled with the holy spirit and did not serve the State; they served the living God. They gave their goods willingly, not by government dictate, to those in need who had journeyed to Jerusalem from outlying areas.
It does not “take a village,” as some politicians have claimed and Communists chant, to raise a child. It takes the spirit of Almighty God working within the family to carry out His will, and implant the spirit of love, joy, peace, longsuffering kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).
Finally, let us place the blame on the ill-fated writings of Marx and Engels upon the Adversary, who placed within the educational system of all nations the theory of Darwinian evolution. Without this theory in place, as taught throughout the world as the cause for mankind’s presence here on the earth, there would be no Communist agenda, for the alternative to evolution is the Divine creation of all creatures. That way is the truth, and it is that truth that sets all of us free from the domination of totalitarian thinking which Communism, in reality, is (John 8:32; James 1:25; 2 Corinthians 3:17).
Mankind did not evolve from a free-sex society, to a matriarchy, and then to a patriarchy in which men became the bourgeois and workers the proletariat. People were designed from the beginning to live as families patterned after the Eternal’s heavenly image.
Where there is the spirit of God there is true liberty, joy, and fulfillment, and in this pre-millennial reign, those qualities have best been served in republics based upon Godly laws and principles, especially those of the United States. Where there resides the spirit of this world and its governments apart from God, totalitarianism reigns, the rule of the few privileged souls over the many serfs and slaves, as witnessed in North Korea, China, and Cuba, and more recently in Venezuela. Communism does not work. Its system is irretrievably flawed because its creator is flawed.
Joy, fulfillment, families, and love cannot prosper within a system that suppresses the fear of the Creator and his laws. Let us heed the words of our Maker and strive to build government within our families and nations that emulate His plan, not our own.
Bibliography
1. Mises.org/profile/bradley-thomas.
2. F. Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, Marx/Engels, Selected Works, 1884, Hottingen-Zurich, translated by Alick West, Dietz Verlag, 1962.
3. See 1.
4. W. Fenton, Toward the Gradual Civilization of the Indian Natives: The Missionary and Linguistic Work of Asher Wright (1803-1875) among the Senecas of Western New York, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Volume 100, Number. 6, December 17, 1956, pages 567-581.
5. See 2
6. See 2.
7. See 1.
8. K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, February 1848.
9. Anonymous, Karl Marx in five or ideas, AFP, Berlin, May 4, 2018.
10. K. Marx. Das Kapital, a Critique of Political Economy, Regnery Publishing, Inc., Washington, D.C., 1867.
11. See 8.