Atheist, racist, bigot, sexist: The truth about the demonic Karl Marx

“Those who say that Karl Marx,” states Dr. Paul Kengor, author of The Devil and Karl Marx, “was somehow doing Christian social justice or some such nonsense make fools of themselves.”

A 2018 photo of a statue of Karl Marx, created by sculptor Wu Weishan on the occasion of Marx' 200th birthday, located at Simeonstiftplatz, Trier, Germany. (Image: Yvain2908/Wikipedia)

In 1999, Harvard University Press published The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, revealing a “tragedy of planetary dimensions.” It documented the untold atrocities of communism and all the people whose lives and livelihood were crushed by the dictatorship of the proletariat from Stalin’s gulag, to the Chinese Cultural Revolution, to the dictatorships of the proletariat established all over Eastern-Central Europe. Any serious reader of The Black Book of Communism would never buy into the evil of communism: the oppression, the culture of death, and the class struggle the system generated. One would expect that “the door to Utopia” of socialism and communism would have effectively closed for good.

But this did not happen: the idea of the socialist and communist utopia has made a comeback. In a recent book entitled The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism’s Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration, Dr. Paul Kengor, professor of political science at Grove City College and senior director and chief academic fellow at the college’s Institute for Faith and Freedom, provides a sophisticated and well-documented analysis of communism by going to the source: Karl Marx. Dr. Kengor recently corresponded about his book and the demonic forces at work in the life and thought of Marx.

CWR: According to a 2020 Gallup poll, 45% of Americans say they would vote for a socialist for president. This is a considerable number and socialist views have been making a steady comeback after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. Did the comeback of socialism urge you to publish the book?

Paul Kengor: It has prompted me to write many books on the subject, and countless articles. This is a pattern I’ve watched develop for 30 years, following the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

For about 20 years I’ve traveled around the country giving talks on campuses with titles like, “Why Communism Is Bad,” sponsored by the likes of the wonderful Young America’s Foundation. I’ve watched and warned that the post-Cold War generation was not learning the lessons of the Cold War and of the destruction of communism and socialism and this latest twaddle that bills itself as “democratic socialism.” I’ve observed the numbers climb yearly in support of these ridiculous philosophies, and I’ve pleaded with people (especially parents, and particularly Catholic-Christian parents) not to send their kids to these awful secular universities. They didn’t listen. Now, we have an entire generation of young people born after the Berlin Wall (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was literally an infant when the Berlin Wall fell) who have been completely miseducated about the horrors of Marxism and socialism.

They’ve learned little to nothing about how bad Marxism and Marx were. And now we’re paying the price.

CWR: There are philosophers (Umberto Galimberti, for example) who still maintain that Marx was a great Christian because for him the past was social injustice, the present made the contradictions of capitalism explode, and justice will be established only in the future. Is this the case, according to your findings?

Paul Kengor: Those who make that claim exhibit profound ignorance. Frankly, it is shocking, truly hard to believe. It is flatly and factually incorrect and utterly and wholly indefensible. Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin, and the founders of the American Communist Party would disagree with them. And obviously, the Roman Catholic Church would disagree with them. If they’d like, they can grab a highlighter and start highlighting passage after passage and quote after quote in my book underlining examples.

Here’s one:

“Communism begins where atheism begins,” said Karl Marx. Of Christianity, Marx added: “The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement, submission, humility. The social principles of Christianity are hypocritical…. So much for the social principles of Christianity.”

The Roman Catholic Church condemned communism as a “satanic scourge” conceived by “the sons of darkness.” Of socialism, in 1931 Pope Pius XI issued his seminal Quadragesimo Anno, where he stated: “Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.”

Even Dorothy Day’s The Catholic Worker insisted: “no true Catholic can be a member of the Communist Party.”

I could go on and on. Those who say that Karl Marx was somehow doing Christian social justice or some such nonsense make fools of themselves.

One of the worst articles I’ve ever seen in the Catholic press was a piece published by the Jesuit America Magazine in the summer of 2019, titled “The Catholic Case for Communism.” I was aghast. Marx and Engels and Lenin would have been aghast as well.

CWR: Why do you think we hear so little about the atrocities of communism?

Paul Kengor: Very simple: Because the political left, which dominates education and especially our universities, does not focus on it. It’s not that typical liberal professors are pro-communist, but, as the late Richard Pipes liked to note, they are anti-anti-communist. They would prefer to condemn anti-communists rather than condemn pro-communists. Communism just doesn’t register very loudly on their outrage meter.

They will scream until they’re blue in the face about gender theory, queer theory, critical theory, “intersectionality,” you name it. But they simply don’t get worked up about the crimes of communism. Besides, in their view, the communists had many “good” intentions.

CWR: For Marx and Marxists, nothing matters but the material world as revealed in the present. Religion is to be eradicated, because it debilitates and opiates the proletariat. Why was Marx so against religion?

Paul Kengor: Marx understood that to initiate the revolution, the Judeo-Christian foundation needed to be razed. The house needed to be burnt to the ground.

In their really important work, The German Ideology, Marx and Engels said that in order to achieve “the success of the cause … it is necessary that man himself should suffer a massive change.” This change must come through “a revolution,” a process of “overthrowing” the old “filthy yoke.” His “generation,” like the Jews whom Moses led out of the wilderness, must “conquer a new world” and “must also perish in order to make room for the people who are fit for a new world.”

But to get there, they had to take down the Judeo-Christian foundation: not just Christianity, but Judaism. “The Israelite faith is repulsive to me,” said Marx. It’s quite telling that in his essay declaring religion “the opium of the people,” Marx said that “the criticism of religion is the beginning of all criticism.” Marx had a favorite quote from Goethe’s Faust: “Everything that exists deserves to perish.” In a letter to Arnold Ruge he called for the “ruthless criticism of all that exists.”

Beyond ruthless criticism, there was ruthless abolition. The word “abolition” is omnipresent throughout Marx’s writings. As his biographer Robert Payne noted, the word almost seems to jump off every page of the Manifesto.

Marx wanted to burn down the house.

CWR: There is an even darker side of Marx: he was obsessed with the demonic, as expressed in his early poetry. Some scholars have suggested that Marx was possessed by demons. The man who wrote about the specter of communism that was haunting Europe wrote about the specters and monsters haunting him. Can you explain why the demonic side of Marx has been kept secret?

Paul Kengor: I deal with that very carefully, and why Marx’s hagiographers have studiously avoided it. I do not hazard to assess whether Marx was, say, possessed, though others have. “There were times when Marx seemed to be possessed by demons,” recorded Robert Payne in his seminal 1968 biography of Marx—probably the best and most insightful biography of Marx. Payne, a man of arts and literature, not a right-winger, and a respected academic not expected to level such a shocking charge lightly, asserted of Marx: “He had the devil’s view of the world, and the devil’s malignity. Sometimes he seemed to know that he was accomplishing works of evil.” Read my book and you’ll get an exhaustive walk through all of that ugliness. It isn’t pretty.

CWR: The situation in Marx’s household was desperate, to say the least. His wife wished that she and her children were safely in their graves, as their lives on earth were hell. Why? Marx’s sexual relationship with the nursemaid, whom he exploited ruthlessly and never paid for her services, included fulfilling his sexual appetite when his wife was ill. This nursemaid was Marx’s contact with the working class, providing free labor and free sex. Was Marx showcasing what socialism had in store for the working class?

Paul Kengor: I believe so. Karl had a sexual relationship with the young nursemaid, Helene Demuth, known as “Lenchen.” Actually, it isn’t quite right to say that Lenchen worked for the Marx family, given that she toiled without pay, almost as Karl’s chattel. The champion of the proletariat never paid Lenchen a penny.

Karl, who refused to bathe, groom, and suffered from boils all over his body (including his penis), bedded Lenchen behind his wife Jenny’s back. Some biographers have pondered whether this was consensual. Either way, in June 1851, Lenchen gave birth. Marx, being the kind of man he was, never acknowledged the little boy, nor paid a penny of child support. He left all of that to Engels, his chief sap, subsidizer, and sugar-daddy.

Karl’s long-suffering wife was crushed. He already put the poor woman through hell via his refusal to work.

CWR: Marx denied his daughters an education and careers. He looked down upon women. The situation in Marx’s household was so toxic that two of his daughters committed suicide. Was Marx showcasing what socialism had in store for women?

Paul Kengor: I find this so ironic. And feminist Marxists totally ignore it. He lamented to Engels: “My wife, alas, delivered a girl and not a boy.” He later lamented to one of his daughters, who likewise gave birth to a girl: “I congratulate you on the happy delivery…. I prefer the ‘male’ sex among children who will be born at this turning point in history.”

Marx’s daughters lived lives of hopelessness and despair. In fact, four of Marx’s six children died before he did. Marx’s two surviving daughters committed suicide in joint suicide pacts with their husbands. Imagine that. Oh, and Marx wrote about suicide pacts in his devilish poetry.

CWR: Marx is considered to be a racist and anti-Semite. His ugly statements against blacks and Jews are notorious. He denigrated his son-in-law, Paul Lafargue, of Cuban origin, as “Negrillo” and called him a “Gorilla.” Why did Marx despise blacks and Jews when, in fact, he and his family were of Jewish origin converted to Christianity? Why the self-hate?

Paul Kengor: Here’s a quick pop quiz for you: Who said this? “This union of Jew and German on a Negro base was bound to produce an extraordinary hybrid.” Or this: “[He] has the blemish customarily found in the negro tribe—no sense of shame, by which I mean shame about making a fool of oneself.” Answer: No, not the grand wizard of the KKK, but Karl Marx. He was wickedly racist.

Another pop quiz. Who said this? “The emancipation of the Jews, in the final analysis, is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.” No, not Hitler. Karl Marx.

In his seminal edited volume on Karl Marx and religion, Saul Padover said that Marx represented “what the Germans call Selbsthass (self-hate), a trait which Karl Marx displayed throughout his whole life.”

I recently wrote an article asking why our wondrous progressives in the cancel culture haven’t canceled Karl Marx. He was a bigot, a racist, an anti-Semite, and a sexist. Why does Marx get a pass? Answer: because the left likes him.

CWR: Why was the Roman Catholic Church so vehemently against communism, opposing this lethal ideology, even before the publication of the Communist Manifesto in 1848? How did communist ideology infiltrate into Roman Catholic seminaries?

Paul Kengor: This is a major part of the book, and perhaps one of the most halting sections of the book for churchgoing Christians. Part 4 is called “Infiltration and Manipulation.” It includes six chapters on the very deliberate and cynical infiltration of churches by communists in the United States, Western and Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union. Communists had striking success with the penetration of the mainline Protestant denominations, particularly the Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church, and what became Presbyterian Church USA.

Emboldened by those successes, communists then went after the Roman Catholic Church in the 1930s, specifically via Communist Party USA’s so-called “outstretched hand” effort. I publish a 1937 secret memo from Communist Party USA (it was held in the Soviet Comintern Archives on CPUSA) in which the comrades in New York City salivated like Pavlov’s dogs over the numbers before them: 18 million Catholics in America, and 80,000 simply between New York’s 110th Street and 59th Street. At the height of its membership, the Party never had more than (at best) 100,000 members. American communists figured that if they could pick up even one percent of American Catholics, they would explode their membership rolls and could dramatically undermine parishes from within.

Most troubling, there was an attempt to infiltrate Catholic seminaries. This has been reported over the years (very sloppily so) regarding the organizing efforts of ex-communist and Catholic convert Bella Dodd, who, it has been claimed, attempted to place “over a thousand communist men” in Catholic seminaries. I walk through those claims very carefully. Did she really say that? How might that have been accomplished? Was she capable? Was that even feasible? And, if so, what has been the impact?

Alas, for those answers, you’ll have to get the book!


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About Ines Angeli Murzaku 29 Articles
Ines Angeli Murzaku (http://academic.shu.edu/orientalia/) is Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, Director of Catholic Studies Program and the Founding Chair of the Department of Catholic Studies at Seton Hall University. She earned a doctorate of research from the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome part of the Pontifical Gregorian University Consortium and has held visiting positions at the Universities of Bologna and Calabria in Italy and University of Münster in Germany. She is a regular commentator to media outlets on religious matters. She has worked for or collaborated with the Associated Press, CNN, Catholic World Report, National Catholic Register, Voice of America, Relevant Radio, The Catholic Thing, Crux, The Record, The Stream, Vatican Radio (Vatican City), and EWTN (Rome). Dr. Murzaku is currently writing a book on St. Mother Teresa entitled Mother Teresa: The Saint of the Peripheries who Became Catholicism’s Center Piece to be published by Paulist Press in 2020.

36 Comments

  1. Karl Marx was obviously an awful human being. But attacking, or even truthfully pointing out the character flaws of the founder of an ideology to support the viewpoint that that ideology is flawed (or evil, or demonic, etc.) is called the fallacy of ad hominem in logic. It would ultimately be more productive to logically point out the flaws of the ideology and not the person(s) associated with it. If we are going to follow Mr Kengor’s and Ms. Murzaka’s approach, than it’s fair game when critics of the Catholic Church through the evil popes/pedophile priests/etc. arguments at us in maintaining an alleged illegitimacy of our beloved Church.

    • If Dr. Kengor and others only relied on analysis of Marx’s personality and life to attack Marxism, then you’d have a fair point. But that’s hardly the case (for example, see my 2018 interview with Dr. Kengor about leftist ideology aimed at marriage and the family). Why must be it an “either/or” approach? Character and actions mean a great deal. And, really, the approach here is to say, “Having witnessed a century (and more) of evil, violence, and murder because of communism, let’s take a deeper look at the inner and outer life of the foundational communist thinker.”

      Critics can, have, and will point to bad popes and evil priests, but the Church wasn’t founded by popes, but by Jesus Christ. And who can deny that his character and actions don’t deeply inform and shape (or at least should) every aspect of Catholic life and belief? Put the other way, if the founder of the Church was a violent, nasty, brutish, hateful figure, don’t you think things would have been a bit different the past 2,000 years?

      • Then I have a question for you. If the man whom you so avidly demonize is as bad as you said he is, then why have the Marxists, as a collective, been so blind to this fact throughout their entire history? Why do they have aspirations and ideals that Marx would find repugnant?

        • Why did so many follow Hitler? Stalin? Why do cultists such as Jim Jones have such avid followers? There are many, inter-connected reasons, but one is that when people latch onto ideas that make easy sense of certain matters while ignoring other matters altogether they often become slaves (and then tyrants) of those ideologies.

          False premises lead to a multitude of wrong destinations. It’s well-known that Marxism spawned a host of malformed children, many of whom fought madly against one another.

          You say I “avidly demonize” Marx. The fact is, I simply note that he was an avid promoter of demonic ideas.

        • Your logical fallacy argument (which I do agree, are often used as if they were honest points when they really avoid the center premise and argument) is not the case here. It is a logical fallacy, only when it is a fallacious attempt to void honest answer of the prime premise.

          It is, however, quite relevant to investigate the man, when he is the mind behind the ideology. It is important in understanding the inner conflicts and history of death that has followed Marxism, to look at and identify the flaws in the life and thinking of the man. Christianity can be investigated the same way certainly. The Popes, Pastors, Ministers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ cannot be a source to judge the gospel by because they are not the ones who brought the message —that was Jesus (Yeshua). And, it would bring justice to the Gospel message to investigate, not only the strength and truth of the message, by the life of Jesus, but also a brilliant corrective to to those who represent and propagate the Gospel message as well.

    • Jeffrey S Fawcett ,
      Those thoughts first ran through my mind also because I’m so weary of everything being reduced to personal attacks on individuals. But sometimes bad people have bad ideas. Other times bad people can accomplish good in spite of themselves. I don’t think Karl Marx was among the latter group though.

    • I agree. If we’re just going ad hominem, we should add that his hair and beard were messy.

      We are within our rights to judge the system of thought that is Marxism. The judgment of Marx himself is reserved for a higher jurisdiction.

      • “The judgment of Marx himself is reserved for a higher jurisdiction.”

        Sure. And if Dr. Kengor or anyone else had rendered judgment on the final state and judgment of Marx’s soul, well, that would be a problem. But actions and words matter. How people treat family members matters. And in many cases, there are clear connections between actions and philosophies. It’s nearly impossible for that to not be the case.

      • The judgment of Marx himself is reserved for a higher jurisdiction.

        Marx’s particular judgment was rendered by Jesus Christ. However, the judgment of his behavior and the damage it caused is the responsibility of all disciples of Christ, just as He exhorted.

        “And why even of yourselves, do you not judge that which is just?” Jesus Christ, Luke 12:57

    • No, I want to know everything about the person who is proposing a new philosophy, a new belief, an orientation. Do not tell me your ideas, just show me who you are. That in itself is enough to indicate whether your ideas should, can be followed. No need to waste time on someone who has never lived by the principles that he/she teaches. “The deeds you do may be the only sermon some persons will hear today” – St. Francis Of Assisi

    • I strongly recommend that you read the book. I have not delved too deeply, yet already it is evident this is a work about more than the “character flaws” of Karl Marx, but the deeply flawed and diabolical tenets if Communism and its impact on the world to this day

  2. Many millions and millions of marked & unmarked graves worldwide of the victims of Marx’s Evil ideology can attest to these crimes against humanity and Gods creations.Why just in the United States alone.We can point to well over 60 Million Souls erased from life since 1972-73.The War against our Catholic Faith has taken a large step forward since the COVID-19 Pandemic.As Parishes were Shuttered & Closed and even today continue to be degraded by States with Marxist/democrat governors as only a small percentage are allowed to enter in masked servitude to these tyrants.

    • And the source of your information is…what/whom exactly? CNN? MSNBC?
      .
      I have not met the man personally, and I doubt you have either. Of course, I have not met Marx, but the historical record seems pretty clear he certainly had very bad ideas that got millions killed.
      .
      I rather doubt the same is true of Trump, or his followers.

    • Atheist–he’s not the one who deleted “under God” from the Pledge;
      Racist–his is the Administration that for “people of color” reduced the unemployment rate to the lowest in our history (except when the other party defended full-employment slavery);
      Bigot–he’s not the one who persecutes, what, “people of religion”; and
      Sexist–he’s among those who still marry people of the opposite sex, and who defends the right-to-live of unborn girls.

    • “Atheist. Racist. Bigot. Sexist. This is also true of Donald Trump!”

      This always seemed to be aimed at Trump just before an election,hmmm.

      • Sad, Indeed — We have been infiltrated with the Smoke of Satan for many years. We students back in the 50’s were made aware that the Press would take over, and destroy Christianity. This evil Venom has infiltrated the Supremem Court, our Higher Education, our Health facilities, and our Church

    • does he also abuse his wife, drive his children to despair & never bathe?
      Stick to the point. Why let your personal political prejudices show your bigotry.

    • Trump is a sinner as we all are. But his actions to uphold the constitution of the US, which protects people’s divine rights from God, shows his love for his fellow man. The left is happy to cancel our divine right to free speech and bear arms. The communists have degraded people with their globalism, God hate, and promotion of sin – abortion, promiscuousness, pornography, homosexuality, drug and alcohol, divorce, pedophilia, beastality, etc. Like satan they deceive people into believing they are “good.”

  3. I recommend the article, “A Conservative’s Revisionist History Aims at Marx – and Misses the Mark” by Cameron Hilditch in National Review, Sept. 3.

    • He ” just” impregnated his poor maid who never for a penny from him.
      And he ” just” inspired his follower Stalin to murder 20 millions of Russian peasants who were starved to death. Causing some desperate parents to even sell their dead children to eat; cannibalism. Ever heard of this? But maybe you don’t care that much?

  4. So when is Antifa/BLM going to start destroying the statues of Herr MArx? Or is bigotry excusable because he invented their entire belief system?

  5. With shame narratives of western civilisation – courtesy of cultural Marxism’s influence in universities and schools – becoming the new political and educational orthodoxy, is it any wonder that many young people conceive of Marx as a benign philanthropist and the ideology he articulated as the remedial charter par excellence of economic and social justice?

  6. “The champion of the proletariat never paid Lenchen a penny.”

    From a brief search, E.H. Carr (in “Karl Marx, A Study in Fanaticism”) and Yvonne Kapp (in “Eleanor Marx: A Biography”) state her wages were seldom paid. That is different from “never paid a penny.” It also seems a bit too convenient for Kengor to fail to mention that Marx’s family spent many years in poverty.

    Furthermore, since Kengor is well aware that Marx was not a Christian, why does he imply he was a hypocrite on this point? Marx’s analysis of capitalism focused on the system as such. He did not fault individual capitalists for not adopting a more “benevolent” or “enlightened” attitude toward the working-class. The capitalist is compelled to do such things as fire “redundant” employees owing to the inherent logic of capitalist production and competition, regardless of how kindhearted the capitalist himself might be.

    Indeed, Marx himself criticized those who tried to base the struggle for socialism on an eternal “morality” or “justice,” because to Marx the demise of capitalism would be due to objective historical laws increasingly grasped more or less consciously by the workers amid their daily economic and political struggles. Capitalism would be done away with due to becoming obsolete, not because of individuals adopting some sort of ethical guidelines on how to live a “socialist” lifestyle. In fact, Marx ridiculed the notion of criticizing capitalism from the perspective of “fairness,” instead writing: “Do not the bourgeois assert that the present-day distribution is ‘fair’? And is it not, in fact, the only ‘fair’ distribution on the basis of the present-day mode of production? Are economic relations regulated by legal conceptions, or do not, on the contrary, legal relations arise out of economic ones?”

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