All religion is passion and at the same time bondage (“religio” or “religare” in Latin). For example, the Christian religion spreads the teachings of Jesus Christ, considered the messiah of God on earth, to access eternal salvation.
Marxism offers paradise on earth, that is why its success, although with few results in the reality of this world.
It has its cultural system, world views, ethics, texts, almost sacred places, prophecies, transcendental elements, beliefs, dogmas, pontiffs, followers and fanatics. The seriousness of its “Holy Inquisition”, origin of purges, crimes, to those who have not accepted or reviewed their dogmas and government systems: Historical materialism, class struggle, dictatorship of the proletariat, single party, etc. Its perfection or “nirvana” has been to reach communism, through pseudo-intellectual reasoning. Its highest priest: Karl Marx; his executioner Lenin; His most relevant followers: Stalin (his purges left 20 million dead in the USSR), Mao-Tse Tung. Mariátegui (inspirer of Sendero Luminoso), Castro, Chávez, in Latin America, sad economic and social failures. All of them have eliminated a fundamental principle of the human being: the freedom to act and think.
THE SHOCKING KARL MARX
Karl Marx (1818-1883) was a German communist philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist, intellectual and politician of Jewish origin. His most notable work is “El capital”. He wrote in 1848 with Engels the “Communist Manifesto”, translated into more than a hundred languages, which convulsed the world as it predicted the collapse of the capitalist exploiting class. He is the founder of Scientific Socialism, a doctrine that he proclaims to be omnipotent, because it is exact. In summary, society must be egalitarian, there must be no social classes, everyone must have the same thing, and there must be no private property.
He was one of the most important intellectuals of the 19th century, with contributions to philosophy, economics, being the main developer of communist theory.
The impact of his philosophy, although lacking in rigor and subject to questioning like all philosophy, was institutionalized in two of the largest countries in the world, Russia and China, and their elites.
The notion that Marxism is a science -and no other philosophy- is the official doctrine of the communist countries, with that denomination or different masks. Marx’s father was a liberal and then a Protestant, Karl was baptized in 1824 and for a time was a fervent Christian, according to his biographers.
Paul Johnson affirms that he was a scholar, a devourer of books, that in “Marx there were three veins: the poet, the journalist, the moralist. Gathered and combined with his enormous will, they made him a mighty writer and seer.
But there was nothing scientific about it; in fact, in everything he was interested in he was anti-scientific ”. Above all he was a destructive poet: “We are the apes of a cold God”; as a god affirms: “I will bellow gigantic curses against humanity”; makes the phrase of Mephistopheles in Goethe’s Faust his own: “Everything that exists must perish”.
He was a great controversial journalist, full of epigrams and aphorisms. “El Capital” is a series of essays, without scientific rigor, of disaggregated articles that he had written as a journalist.
APHORISMS THAT WERE NOT OF HIS OWN HARVEST
His sharp questioners find that “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains” and “Religion is the opium of the people” are by Henrich Heine; “Workers of the world unite!” by Karl Shaper; “To each one according to his abilities, to each one according to his needs”, by Luis Blanc; “The dictatorship of the proletariat”, by Blanqui. Using phrases in a brief, concise manner and in the appropriate monument, due to his nose as a journalist, his harsh critics observe, is what saved him from oblivion. If not, they ask that the last three sentences of the Communist Manifesto be reviewed, which are not theirs, and correspond to some of those cited.
ELITIST SKETCH
Marx was a failed academic for which he astonished the world by founding a new philosophical school: Hegel’s Dialectic (art of persuading, debating and reasoning different ideas).
But his own philosophy stems from hatred of usury and moneylenders, which have nothing to do with politics or economics, a feeling related to his own money problems. Marx argues that “the world was malfunctioning because it was a combination of Rossseau and student coffee-talk anti-Semitism.”
He affirmed that the proletariat was the infantry of the revolution and the intellectuals the elite, for which reason he never spoke to the peasants and landowners. Marx wrote about finance and industry, but -according to his biographers- he never had anything to do with financial and industrial processes and he rejected an invitation from Engels to visit a cotton spinning mill and as Paul Johnson states: “He never set foot in a mill, factory , mine or other type of industrial establishment.” In addition, he was hostile to the workers who acquired revolutionary consciousness, since they did not “share his apocalyptic visions”, since, for example, the majority of the English workers were “qualified workers, self-taught, disciplined, with good manners, anti-bohemian, eager to to transform society, but moderate in terms of the practical steps to follow.” He regarded them with disdain: “revolutionary cannon fodder, nothing more.”
THE CAPITAL OF MARX AND ITS INTEREST
Of a communist worker who “dared” to some observation of his thought, he angrily said: “that he was guilty of carrying out an agitation without doctrine” and concluded: “Until now ignorance has never helped anyone.” (screaming and standing up, typical of a fit of rage). For Marx the facts do not have central importance, since he was not precisely a student of economics but rather a moral censor. His masterpiece “Capital” has been described as a “huge and sometimes incoherent Sermon, an onslaught against the industrial process and the principle of property.”
I WAS NOT MOTIVATED BY THE TRUTH
It is evident that his investigations were not deep, that he did not check his quotations, that his digressions were formulated two hundred years ago, that scholars have analyzed them with meticulous historical rigor, so it is absurd to qualify Marxism as “scientific”, except of course for its supporters that few have read Capital, that because it is a classic it can be commented on and continue without even having leafed through it, nor the summaries or comments as almost all of us do.
Paul Johnson affirms that the force that impelled Marx has its deep roots in his personality, in four aspects of his character: “His taste for violence, his appetite for power, his inability to manage money and, above all, his tendency to to exploit those around him.” Thus Johnson examines each of his claims, with quotes and historical research, neither denied nor contested.
VIOLENCE, RESENTMENT AND ANXIETY
Violence has been characteristic of Marxist regimes, emanating from the character of its mentor. Marx was characterized by his verbal violence, exploding in outbursts of fury and even physical aggression. The fights with his family are witnessed by his wife Jenny von Estphalen (his pride in her that she was of aristocratic origin). At the University of Bonn he was arrested for having a pistol and almost expelled. In the archives of the University there are acts of confrontation with the students, he had a duel and received a cut in the left eye. Public was his complete break with his mother (he did not attend her funeral). He fought everyone he associated with, unless he completely dominated them. His favorite play “Troilus and Cressida” by Shakespeare delighted him and he repeated it because of the violence of the insults that were in it. One victim was his fellow revolutionary Karl Heinzen, who retaliated by doing a portrait of Marx: “Marx was intolerably filthy, a cross between a cat and a monkey, a dirty yellow complexion.” Marx was never really in a position of power, which is why such fury spread to his books, that his followers Lenin, Mao, Stalin, put into effect violence on a large scale.
MORAL FOR OTHERS
Marx demanded morality but tended to think that morality did not apply to him. The interests of the proletariat he respected because they coincided with his own. The feelings and opinions of others never concerned him. He was not interested in democracy and hated elections, thus leaving a good legacy for totalitarian regimes. Annenkov calls him “the personification of a democratic dictator.” Techow paints a remarkable portrait of Marx: “A man of remarkable personality, with uncommon intellectual superiority, and if his heart had equaled his intellect and he had both love and hate, I would have put my hands in the fire for him.” Bakunin: “Marx does not believe in God but he believes a lot in himself and makes everyone serve him. His heart is filled, not with love, but with bitterness, and he has little compassion for the human race.” Marx always had money problems, despite the fact that he received large sums by inheritance. He spent it and then got annoyed when he had to pay large bills and his interest, which he considered a crime against humanity. However, he was a funny man. His excellent jokes made people laugh and addicted, but they were often wild and hurtful. His three daughters were highly intelligent, but Marx denied them a satisfactory education and forbade them definitively from professional careers.
INHERITANCE OF A REMARKABLE INTELLECTUAL
Nothing that has been said of Marx is imagined or invented. The important works of his, letters, diaries, memoirs of him testify to this. His influence still persists, unfortunately without positive effects. Borges thinks that: “All theories are legitimate and none of them matter. What matters is what is done with them.” The Bible confirms it: “You will know them by their fruits.”