Was Marx a Satanist? Richard Wurmbrand certainly thought so and says as much in his mostly forgotten book Marx & Satan.
Wurmbrand, a Romanian pastor who experienced communist persecution first hand, quotes the poetry and drama of a young Karl Marx to support his claim. For example, the conclusion of Oulanem (1837):
If there is a Something which devours,I'll leap within it, though I bring theworld to ruins –The world which bulks between meand the abyssI will smash to pieces with myenduring curses.I'll throw my arms around its harsh reality,Embracing me, the world will dumblypass away,
And then sink down to utter nothingness,
Perished, with no existence - that would be really living.
Hardly a message of love, joy, peace and hope, to say nothing of bad verse. But was Marx a member of a satanic sect? Wurmbrand doesn't produce a smoking gun but circumstantial evidence, and rhetoric from Marx's family and friends make for unsettling reflection. His daughters Eleanor and Laura commit suicide, his friends Bakunin and Proudhon embrace Satan as the guiding anti-principle of revolution.
More than this, Wurmbrand highlights the destructive hatred of the radical Left, a hatred he believes satanic and with good cause, it's killed millions. He quotes Che Guevara:
Hate is an element of fight - pitiless hate against the foe, hate that lifts the revolutionist above the natural limitation of man and makes him become an efficient, destructive, cool, calculating, and cold killing machine.
University students facing 10 year prison sentences for revolutionary rage might want to think about the ethos and consequences of their actions. Lenin did, apparently, on his deathbed:
I committed a great error. My nightmare is to have the feeling that I'm lost in an ocean of blood from the innumerable victims. It is too late to return. To save our country, Russia, we would have needed men like Francis of Assisi. With ten men like him we would have saved Russia.
But you didn't, Vladimir, you bathed it in blood.
Is it beyond the bounds of possibility that Karl Marx was a ritual satanist, along with Stalin, Hitler and associated devils? If their hatred of God and all we hold decent, good and true, coupled with rage against life and humanity itself suggests the demonic, the effect of their thought most certainly is. Yes, to the tune of hundreds of millions of people tortured, killed and thrown into misery.
Richard Wurmbrand, who was imprisoned by the Romanian communists for the sin of being a Christian ends, towards the conclusion of his short book with:
Sadly, Satanic Marxism has a materialistic philosophy that blinds its followers to spiritual realities. But matter is not all that exists. There is a reality of the spirit, of truth, beauty, and ideals.
There is also a world of evil spirits, whose head is Satan. He fell from heaven through pride and drew down with him a host of angels. Then he seduced the progenitors of the human race. Since the Fall, his deceit has been perpetuated and increased through every conceivable device, until today we see God's beautiful creation ravaged by world wars, bloody revolutions and counterrevolutions, dictatorships, exploitation, racism of many kinds, false religions, agnosticism and atheism, crimes and crooked dealings, infidelities in love and friendship, broken marriages, rebellious children. Mankind has lost the vision of God. But what has taken the place of this vision? Is it something better?
Is it something better? Those Americans smashing up their cities and enabling the nihilism therein might want to think about that. To say nothing of a "world of evil spirits."
LSP