Brad Alles

All worldview strive to improve life here on Earth.  Let’s continue to see what Marxism says regarding the future.

Marxists state that socialist governments will eventually wither away, leading to pure communal living, where all share and share alike. No government will be necessary, since all needs are fulfilled by good people who act in other’s interests. Dr. David Noebel asks a piercing question: “When, exactly, can we expect to see the state begin to wither away?”

The harsh truth is this: no one abandons power. In reality, socialist governments don’t lead to a classless society; they simply lead to another elite class. In the Soviet Union, the bourgeois was replaced by the “state bourgeois” who owned everything. This is an illustration of Lord Acton’s famous saying, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” If a person’s worldview states that humans are basically good, there will be no evidence to back up that claim.

If you want to start at the end with Marxism, see the Communist Party USA’s website to view their goal for the future. It clearly states, “A better and peaceful world is possible—a world where people and nature come before profits. That’s socialism. That’s our vision. We are the Communist Party USA.” To see how far that agenda has progressed, turn back to the Congressional Record from the House of Representatives in 1963. Florida Representative Herlong shared forty-five Communist goals according to writer Cleon Skousen. Some of these were:

1. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

2. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”

3. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

4. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

5. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”

6. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”

7. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

8. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and propaganda.

9. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture–education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

It should be no surprise that the Communist goals set out over 50 years ago have come to reality today.

This drive to create a world in the image of Marxism continues today. Although forms of it may have changed, Marxism still exerts tremendous influence on college campuses. US News and World Report stated, “But Marxism is so entrenched in [college] courses ranging from literature to anthropology, and addressing topics on everything from class systems of Victorian England to the alienation expressed by the hip-hop culture…that today’s students are virtually bathed in Marx’s ideas.” For example, take Portland State University’s course called “Revolutionary Marxism: Theory and Practice.” The course is explained this way:

The onset of the Arab Spring, revolts in European capitals against austerity, and the emergence of Occupy Wall Street here in the US have made the need for understanding revolutionary political theories [more] urgent than ever.

This course is designed to introduce students to the basic concepts of Marxist thought with an emphasis on the practical applications of Marxist Theory in local political struggle. We will focus on four major areas throughout the semester, including the Fundamentals of Marxist Theory, Marxism and Oppression, Revolutionary Practice, and The Future of Socialism. In exploring these four areas of focus, the course will compare and contrast revolutionary Marxism to Stalinism, reformist socialism, leading academic interpretations of Marxism, as well as other radical leftist ideologies.

The course’s instructors are both admitted socialists. They define the course’s goals as learning the fundamentals of Marxist theory, applying a Marxist analysis to current events, and applying Marxist theory to local political and community organizing. When college students are taught Marxist principles, the words of poet and philosopher George Santayana come to mind: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

But it is not just in academic circles where Marxism still holds influence. The political and economic realms are steeped in Marxist thought. Frances Fox Piven, professor of political science at the City University of New York (CUNY) told an audience of the Left Forum 2012, “We can work together because we have a really huge task before us of transforming America and the world. And there is room for all of us. For religious leftists, for people who think peace is the main answer, for people who think that wholesome food is what we really need, for ecologists and for the old-fashioned Southern Democrats, Democratic Socialists, Socialists and Communists. So we are all together.”

It’s clear that Marxist do indeed have a vision for the future. To quote Piven, it is “transforming America and the world.” Yet when confronted with the evidence that their worldview doesn’t work—the failed Communist nations, the success of capitalism—they simply start at the end. Dr. Fred Schwarz summarizes it this way: “In the last analysis, (the Marxist) believes in the inevitable triumph of Communism, not because of the evidence, but because of his faith in the dialectic.” Marxists are Marxists not because of the present, but because of the future. The future, they believe, belongs to them.

We’ll finish this series next week with the solution to the problem–Jesus and the Word of God.