Coletânea

Richard Wurmbrand - Marx & Satan, pp 20-35

TWO AGAINST ALL GODS
Satan in Marx's Family

When he wrote the works quoted in the last chapter, Marx, a premature genius, was only eighteen. His life's program had thus already been established. He had no vision of serving mankind, the proletariat, or socialism. He merely wished to bring the world to ruin, to build for himself a throne whose bulwark would be human fear. At that point, correspondence between Karl Marx and his father included some especially cryptic passages. The son writes, "A curtain had fallen. My holy of holies was rent asunder and new gods had to be installed." [1] These words were written on November 10, 1837 by a young man who had professed Christianity until then. He had earlier declared that Christ was in his heart. Now this is no longer so. Who are the newgods installed in Christ's place? The father replies. "I refrained from insisting on an explanation about a very mysterious matter although it seemed highly dubious." [2] What was this mysterious matter? No biographer of Marx has explained these strange sentences. On March 2, 1837, Marx's father writes to his son: "Your advancement, the dear hope of seeing your name someday of great repute, and your earthly well-being are not the only desires of my heart. These are illusions I had had a long time, but I can assure you that their fulfillment would not have made me happy. Only if your heart remains pure and beats humanly and if no demon is able to alienate your heart from better feelings, only then will I be happy."[3] What made a father suddenly express the fear of demonic influence upon a young son who until then had been a confessed Christian? Was it the poems he received as a present from his son for his fifty-fifth birthday? The following quotation is taken from Marx's poem "On Hegel": Words I teach all mixed up into a devilish muddle. Thus, anyone may think just what he chooses to think. [4] Here also are words from another epigram on Hegel: Because I discovered the highest, And because I found the deepest through meditation, I am great like a God; I clothe myself in darkness like Him. [5] In his poem "The Pale Maiden," he writes: Thus heaven I've forfeited, I know it full well. My soul, once true to God, Is chosen for hell. [6] No commentary is needed. Marx had started out with artistic ambitions. His poems and drama are important in revealing the state of his heart; but having no literary value, they received no recognition. Lack of success in drama gave usa Goebbels, the propaganda minister of the Nazis; in philosophy a Rosenberg, the purveyor of German racism; in painting and architecture a Hitler. Hitler was a poet too. It can be assumed that he never read Marx's poetry, but the resemblance is striking. In his poems Hitler mentions the same Satanist practices: On rough nights, I go sometimes To the oak of Wotan in the still garden,To make a pact with dark forces. The moonlight makes runes appear. Those that were sunbathed during the day Become small before the magic formula. [7] "Wotan" is the chief god of German heathen mythology. "Runes" were symbols used for writing in olden times. Hitler soon abandoned a poetic career, and so did Marx, who exchanged it for a revolutionary career in the name of Satan against a society which had not appreciated his poems. This is conceivably one of the motives for his total rebellion.

Being despised as a Jew was perhaps another. Two years after his father's expressed concern, in 1839, the young Marx wrote The Difference Between Democritus' and Epicurus' Philosophy of Nature, in the preface to which he aligns himself with the declaration of Aeschylus, "I harbor hatred against all gods."[8] This he qualifies by stating that he is against all gods on earth and in heaven that do not recognize human self-consciousness as the supreme godhead. Marx was an avowed enemy of all gods, a man who had bought his sword from the prince of darkness at the price of his soul. He had declared it his aim to draw all mankind into the abyss and to follow them laughing. Could Marx really have bought his sword from Satan? His daughter Eleanor says that Marx told her and her sisters many stories when they were children. The one she liked most was about a certain Hans Röckle. "The telling of the story lasted months and months, because it was a long, long story and never finished. Hans Röckle was a witch ... who had a shop with toys and many debts.... Though he was a witch, he was always in financial need. Therefore he had to sell against his will all his beautiful things, piece after piece, to the Devil.... Some of these adventures were horrifying and made your hair stand on end." [9] Is it normal for a father to tell his little children horrifying stories about selling one's dearest treasures to the Devil? Robert Payne in his book Marx [10] also recounts this incident in great detail, as told by Eleanor - how unhappy Röckle, the magician, sold the toys with reluctance, holding on to them until the last moment. But since he had made a pact with the Devil, there was no escaping it. Marx's biographer continues, "There can be very little doubt that those interminable stories were autobiographical. 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." [10] When Marx had finished Oulanem and other early poems in which he wrote about having a pact with the Devil, he had no thought of socialism. He even fought against it. He was editor of a German magazine, the Rheinische Zeitung, which "does not concede even theoretical validity to Communist ideas in their present form, let alone desire their practical realization, which it anyway finds impossible.... Attempts by masses to carry out Communist ideas can be answered by a cannon as soon as they have become dangerous..." [12]

Marx Will Chase God from Heaven

After reaching this stage in his thinking, Marx met Moses Hess, the man who played the most important role in his life, the man who led him to embrace the Socialist ideal. Hess calls him "Dr. Marx - my idol, who will give the last kick to medieval religion and politics."[13] To give a kick to religion was Marx's first aim, not socialism. Georg Jung, another friend of Marx at that time, writes even more clearly in 1841 that Marx will surely chase God from His heaven and will even sue Him. Marx calls Christianity one of the most immoral religions.[14] No wonder, for Marx note believed that Christians of ancient times had slaughtered men and eaten their flesh. These then were the expectations of those who initiated Marx into the depths of Satanism. There is no support for the view that Marx entertained lofty social ideals about helping mankind, saw religion as a hindrance in fulfilling this ideal, and for this reason embraced an antireligious attitude. On the contrary, Marx hated any notion of God or gods. He determined to be the man who would kick out God - all this before he had embraced socialism, which was only the bait to entice proletarians and intellectuals to embrace this devilish ideal.

Eventually Marx claims not to even admit the existence of a Creator. Incredibly, he maintained that mankind shaped itself. He wrote, "Seeing that for the Socialist man all of so-called world history is nothing other than the creation of man through human work, than the development of nature for man, he has the incontestable proof of his being born from himself.... The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the supreme being for man." When no Creator is acknowledged, there is no one to give us commandments, or to whom we are accountable. Marx confirms this by stating, "Communists preach absolutely no morals." When the Sovietsin their early years adopted the slogan, "Let us drive out the capitalists from earth and God from heaven," they were merely fulfilling the legacy of Karl Marx.

One of the peculiarities of black magic, as mentioned earlier, is the inversion of names. Inversions in general so permeated Marx's whole manner of thinking that he used them throughout. He answered Proudhon's book The Philosophy of Misery with another book entitled The Misery of Philosophy. He also wrote, "We have to use instead of the weapon of criticism, the criticism of weapons." [15] Here are further examples of Marx's use of inversion in his writing: "Let us seek the enigma of the Jew not in his religion, but rather let us seek the enigma of his religion in the real Jew." [16] "Luther broke the faith in authority, because he restored the authority of faith. He changed the priests into laymen, because he changed the laymen into priests." [17] Marx used this technique in many places. He used what could be called typical Satanist style.

Shifting gears somewhat, men usually wore beards in Marx's time, but not beards like his, and they did not have long hair. Marx's manner and appearance was characteristic of the disciples of Joanna Southcott, a cultist priestess of an occult sect who claimed to be in contact with the ghost Shiloh. [18] It is strange that some sixty years after her death in 1814, "the Chatham group of Southcottians were joined by a soldier, James White, who, after his period of service in India, returned and took the lead locally, developing further the doctrines of Joanna ... with a communistic tinge." [19] Marx did not often speak publicly about metaphysics, but we can gather his views from the men with whom he associated. One of his partners in the First International was Mikhail Bakunin, a Russian anarchist,who wrote: "The Evil One is the satanic revolt against divine authority, revolt in which we see the fecund germ of all human emancipations, the revolution. Socialists recognise each other by the words 'In the name of the one to whom a great wrong has been done.'" "Satan [is] the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge." [20]

Bakunin does more than praise Lucifer. He has a concrete program of revolution, but not one that would free the poor from exploitation. He writes: "In this revolution we will have to awaken the Devil in the people, to stir up the basest passions. Our mission is to destroy, not to edify. The passion of destruction is a creative passion." [21] Marx, along with Bakunin, formed the First International and endorsed this strange program. Marx and Engels said in The Communist Manifesto that the proletarian sees law, morality, and religion as "so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests." Bakunin reveals that Proudhon, another major Socialist thinker and at that time a friend of Karl Marx, also "worshipped Satan."[22] Hess had introduced Marx to Proudhon, who wore the same hair style typical of the nineteenth-century Satanist sect of Joanna Southcott. Proudhon, in The Philosophy of Misery, declared that God was the prototype for injustice. "We reach knowledge in spite of him, we reach society in spite of him. Every step forward is a victory in which we overcome the Divine." [23] He exclaims, "Come, Satan, slandered by the small and by kings. God is stupidity and cowardice; God is hypocrisy and falsehood; God is tyranny and poverty; God is evil. Where humanity bows before an altar, humanity, the slave of kings and priests, will be condemned.... I swear, God,with my hand stretched out towards the heavens, that you are nothing more than the executioner of my reason, the sceptre of my conscience.... God is essentially anticivilized, antiliberal, antihuman." [24] Proudhon declares God to be evil because man, His creation, is evil.

Such thoughts are not original; they are the usual content of sermons delivered in Satanist worship. Marx later quarreled with Proudhon and wrote a book to refute his Philosophy of Misery. But Marx contradicted only minor economic doctrines. He had no objection to Proudhon's demonic anti-God rebellion. Heinrich Heine, the renowned German poet, was a third intimate friend of Marx. He too was a Satan-fancier. He wrote: "I called the devil and he came, His face with wonder I must scan; He is not ugly, he is not lame. He is a delightful, charming man." [25] "Marx was a great admirer of Heinrich Heine. Their relationship was warm, hearty." [26] Why did he admire Heine? Perhaps for Satanist thoughts like thefollowing: "I have a desire ... for a few beautiful trees before my door, and if dear God wishes to make me totally happy, he will give me the joy of seeing six or seven of my enemies hanged on these trees. With a compassionate heart I will forgive them after death all the wrong they have done to me during their life. Yes, we must forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged. I am not revengeful. I would like to love my enemies. But I cannot love them before taking revenge upon them. Only then my heart opens for them. As long as one has not avenged himself, bitterness remains in the heart." Would any decent man be an intimate friend of one who thinks like this? But Marx and his entourage thought alike. Lunatcharski, a leading philosopher who was once minister of education of the U.S.S.R., wrote in Socialism and Religion that Marx set aside all contact with God and instead put Satan in front of marching proletarian columns.

It is essential at this point to state emphatically that Marx and his comrades, while anti-God, were not atheists, as present-day Marxists claim to be. That is, while they openly denounced and reviled God, they hated a God in whom they believed. They challenged not His existence, but His supremacy. When the revolution broke out in Paris in 1871, the Communard Flourens declared, "Our enemy is God. Hatred of God is the beginning of wisdom." [27] Marx greatly praised the Communards who openly proclaimed this aim. But what has this to do with a more equitable distribution of goods or with better social institutions? Such are only the outward trappings for concealing the real aim - the total eradication of God and His worship. Today we see the evidence of this in such countries as Albania and North Korea, where all churches, mosques, and pagodas have been closed.

Marx's Devilish Poetry

We see this clearly in Marx's poetry. In "Invocation of One in Despair" and "Human Pride," man's supreme supplication is for his own greatness. If man is doomed to perish through his own greatness, this will be a cosmic catastrophe, but he will die as a godlike being, mourned by demons. Marx's ballad "The Player" records the singer's complaints against a God who neither knows nor respects his art. This emerges from the dark abyss of hell, "bedeviling the mind andbewitching the heart, and his dance is the dance of death."[28] The minstrel draws his sword and throws it into the poet's soul. Art emerging from the dark abyss of hell, bedeviling the mind... This reminds us of the words of the American revolutionary Jerry Rubin in Do It: "We've combined youth, music, sex, drugs, and rebellion with treason - and that's a combination hard to beat." [29] In his poem "Human Pride," Marx admits that his aim is not to improvethe world or to reform or revolutionize it, but simply to ruin it and to enjoy its being ruined:

With disdain I will throw my gauntlet
Full in the face of the world,
And see the collapse of this pygmy giant
Whose fall will not stifle my ardour.
Then will I wander godlike and victorious
Through the ruins of the world
And, giving my words an active force,
I will feel equal to the Creator. [30]

Marx adopted Satanism after intense inner struggle. He ceased writing poems during a period of severe illness, a result of the tempest within his heart. He wrote at that time about his vexation at having to make an idol of a view he detested. He felt sick. [31] The overriding reason for Marx's conversion to communism appears clearly in a letter of his friend Georg Jung to Ruge: it was not the emancipation of the proletariat, nor even the establishing of a better social order. Jung writes: "If Marx, Bruno Bauer and Feuerbach associate to found atheological-political review, God would do well to surround himself with all his angels and indulge in self-pity, for these three will certainly drive him out of heaven...." [32]

Were these poems the only expressly Satanist writings of Karl Marx? We do not know, because the bulk of his works is kept secret by those who guard his manuscripts. In The Revolted Man, Albert Camus stated that thirty volumes of Marx and Engels have never been published and expressed the presumption that they are not much like what is generally known as Marxism. On reading this, I had one of my secretaries write to the Marx Institute in Moscow, asking if this assertion of the French writer is true. I received a reply. The vice director, one Professor M. Mtchedlov, after saying Camus lied, nevertheless confirmed his allegations. Mtchedlov wrote that of a total of one hundred volumes, only thirteen have appeared. He offered a ridiculous excuse for this: World War II forestalled the printing of the other volumes. The letter was written in 1980,thirty-five years after the end of the war. And the State Publishing House of the Soviet Union surely has sufficient funds. From this letter it is clear that though the Soviet Communists have all the manuscripts for one hundred volumes, they have chosen to publish only thirteen. There is no other explanation than that most of Marx's ideas are deliberately being kept secret.

Marx's Ravaged Life

All active Satanists have ravaged personal lives, and this was the case with Marx as well. Arnold Künzli, in his book Karl Marx - A Psychogram,[33] writes about Marx's life, including the suicide of two daughters and a son-in-law. Three children died of malnutrition. His daughter Laura, married to the Socialist Lafargue, also buried three of her children; then she and her husband committed suicide together. Another daughter, Eleanor, decided with her husband to do likewise. She died; he backed out at the last minute. Marx felt no obligation to earn a living for his family, though he could easily have done so through his tremendous knowledge of languages. Instead, he lived by begging from Engels. He had an illegitimate child by his maid servant, Helen Demuth. Later he attributed the child to Engels, who accepted this comedy. Marx drank heavily. Riazanov, director of the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow, admits this fact in his book Karl Marx, Man, Thinker and Revolutionist. [34] Eleanor was Marx's favorite daughter. He called her Tussy and frequently said, "Tussy is me." She was shattered when she heard about the scandal of illegitimacy from Engels on his deathbed. It was this that led to her suicide. It should be noted that Marx, in The Communist Manifesto, had railed against capitalists "having the wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal."

Such hypocrisy was not out of character for Karl Marx. There was an even darker spot in the life of Marx, the great revolutionary. The German newspaper Reichsruf (January 9, 1960)published the fact that the Austrian chancellor Raabe donated toNikita Khrushchev, then director of Soviet Russia, an original letter of Karl Marx. Khrushchev did not enjoy it, because it was proof thatMarx had been a paid informer of the Austrian police, spying on revolutionaries. The letter had been found accidentally in a secret archive. It indicated that Marx, as an informer, reported on his comrades during his exile in London. He received $25 for each bit of information he turned up. His notes were about the revolutionary exiles in London, Paris, and Switzerland. One of those against whom he informed was Ruge, who considered himself an intimate friend of Marx. Cordial letters between the two still exist.

Rolv Heuer describes Marx's ravaged financial life in Genius andRiches: "While he was a student in Berlin, the son of papa Marx received 700 thalers a year pocket-money." [35] This was an enormous sum because at that time only 5 percent of the population had an annual income greater than 300 thalers. During his lifetime, Marx received from Engels some six million French francs, according to the Marx Institute. Yet he always lusted after inheritances. While an uncle of his was in agony, Marx wrote, "If the dog dies, I would be out of mischief."[36] To which Engels answers, "I congratulate you for the sickness of the hinderer of an inheritance, and I hope that the catastrophe will happen now."[37] "The dog" died, and Marx wrote on March 8, 1855, "A very happy event. Yesterday we were told about the death of the ninety-year-old uncle of my wife. My wife will receive some one hundred Lst; even more if the old dog has not left a part of his money to the lady who administered his house." [38]

He did not have any kinder feelings for those who were much nearer to him than his uncle. He was not even on speaking terms with his mother. In December 1863 he wrote to Engels, "Two hours ago a telegram arrived to say that my mother is dead. Fate needed to take one member of the family. I already had one foot in the grave. Under the circumstances I am needed more than the old woman. I have to go to Trier about their inheritance." [39] This was all he had to say at his mother's passing. In addition, the relationship between Marx and his wife was demonstrably poor. She abandoned him twice but returned each time. When she died, he did not even attend her funeral.

Always in need of funds, Marx lost much money at he stock exchange, where he, the great economist, knew only how to lose. Marx was an intellectual of high caliber, as was Engels. But their correspondence is full of obscenities, unusual for their class of society. Foul language abounds, and there is not one letter in which one hears an idealist speaking about his humanist or Socialist dream. Since the Satanist sect is highly secret, we have only reports about the possibilities of Marx's connections with it. But his disorderly life is undoubtedly another link in the chain of evidence already considered.

NOTES: Chapter 2
1. Karl Marx, letter of November 10, 1837 to his father, MEW, XXX,p. 218.
2. Ibid., Heinrich Marx, letter of February 10, 1838 to Karl Marx,p. 229.
3. Ibid., Heinrich Marx, letter of March 2, 1837 to Karl Marx, p.203.
4. Ibid., Karl Marx, "Hegel," pp. 41, 42.
5. Quoted in Deutsche Tagespost, West Germany, December 31, 1982.
6. Op. cit., MEW, XXX, Karl Marx, "Das Bleiche Mädchen" ("The PaleMaiden"), pp. 55-57.
7. Müllern-Schönhausen, The Solution of the Riddle, Adolf Hitler.
8. Op. cit., MEW, III, Karl Marx, Ueber die Differenz derDemokritischen and Epikureischen Naturphilosophie Vorrede (TheDifference Between Democritus' and Epicurus' Philosophy of Nature,Foreword), p. 10.
9. Jenny von Westphalen, Mohr und General, Erinnerungen an Marxund Engels (The Moor and the General, Remembrances about Marx andEngels) (Berlin: Dietz-Verlag, 1964), pp. 273, 274.
10. Payne, Robert, Marx (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1968), p.317.
11. Ibid.
12. Karl Marx, Die Rheinische Zeitung (Rhine Newspaper), "DerKommunismus and die Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung (Communism and theAugsburger Allgemeine Newspaper)," MEGA, I, i (1), p. 263.
13. Moses Hess, letter of September 2, 1841 to Berthold Auerbach,MEGA, I, i (2), p. 261.
14. Ibid., Georg Jung, letter of October 18, 1841 to Arnold Ruge,pp. 261, 262.
15. Karl Marx, Zur Kritik der Hegelschen RechtsphilosophieEinleitung (Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of Law), Introduction,MEGA, I, i (1), p. 614.
16. MEW, I, p. 372.
17. Ibid., p. 386.
18. Hans Enzensberger, Gespräche mit Marx und Engels(Conversations with Marx and Engels) (Frankfurt-am-Main: Insel Verlag,1973), p. 17.
19. James Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. XI(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1921), p. 756.
20. Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State (New York: DoverPublications, 1970), p. 112.
21. Roman Gul, Dzerjinskii, published by the author in Russian(Paris, 1936), p. 81.
22. Op. cit., Enzensberger, p. 407.
23. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Philosophie de la Misere (ThePhilosophy of Misery) (Paris: Union Generate d'Editions, 1964), pp.199, 200.
24. Ibid., pp. 200, 201.
25. Paul Garus, History of the Devil (East Brunswick, NJ.: BellPublish ing Co.), p. 435.
26. Heinrich Heine, Works, Vol. I, p. LXIV.
27. Charles Boyer, The Philosophy of Communism (10: "The PoliticalAtheism of Communism" by Igino Giordani) (New York: Fordham UniversityPress, 1952), p. 134.
28. Op. cit., Marx, "Spielmann," pp. 57, 58.
29. Jerry Rubin, Do It (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970), p. 249.
30. Karl Marx, "Menschenstolz" ("Human Pride"), MEGA, I, i (2), p.50.
31. Ibid., Karl Marx, letter of November 10, 1837 to his father,p. 219.
32. Ibid., Georg Jung, letter of October 18, 1841 to Arnold Ruge,pp. 261, 262.
33. Arnold Künzli, Karl Marx, Eine Psychographie (Karl Marx, aPsychogram) (Zurich: Europa Verlag, 1966).
34. David Rjazanov, Karl Marx: Man, Thinker and Revolutionist(Karl Marx als Denker, Mensch und Revolutionary (New York:International Publishers, 1927).
35. Rolv Heuer, Genie and Reichtum (Genius and Riches) (Vienna:Bertelsmann Sachbuchverlag, 1971), pp. 167, 168.
36. Karl Marx, letter of February 27, 1852 to Friedrich Engels,MEW, XXVIII, p. 30.
37. Ibid., Friedrich Engels, letter of March 2, 1852 to Karl Marx,p. 33.
38. Ibid., Karl Marx, letter of March 8, 1855 to Friedrich Engels,p. 438.
39. Karl Marx, letter of December 2, 1863 to Friedrich Engels, MEW, XXX, p. 376.