View of God, Creation, and Man

Then I will wander godlike and victorious

Through the ruins of the world

And, giving my words an active force,

I will feel equal to the creator.

Karl Marx

Just as the writers of the French Revolution were contemptuous of the Christian doctrine of creation, so Engels and Marx were similarly contemptuous of religion. While growing up, both read a famous book of that era which denied the Jesus of traditional Christianity and lost their faith in Christianity’s truth. They each concluded that humanity was solely the product of nature and not God. Anti-Christian writers who were influential in Germany at the time[1] wrote statements such as “the turning point of history will be the moment man becomes aware that the only God of man is man himself.”[2] Marx echoed this when he said it is necessary “to recognize as the highest divinity, the human self-consciousness itself!”[3] Rejecting religion, Marx and Engels needed a philosophical foundation on which to organize their thought. As such, each sought a substitute idol around which to build their lives.[4]

While Marx was in school, he studied two ancient Greeks who taught philosophic materialism. “Marx felt that these philosophers provided an answer about the origins of the universe that could do away with the need for God” because “atoms and their interactions” could “explain everything.”[5] With this foundation, Marx felt that every aspect of the world, from the solar system to plants to animals to even human consciousness could be explained by the forces of nature and matter. No modern proponent of evolution could express better the implications of this belief than Engels did. As Engels wrote, if the question is raised, “what thought and consciousness really are and where they come from, it becomes apparent that they are products of the human brain and that man himself is a product of nature, which has developed in and along with its environment; hence it is self-evident that the products of the human brain, being in the last analysis also products of nature.”[6] Engels argued in a book of his own, which was read to Marx before publication, that evolution would explain everything.[7] Engels boasted that by discovery of evolution, “the last vestige of a Creator external to the world is obliterated.”[8] Eliminating the idea of God would have profound consequences. For Marx and Engels’ followers came to believe, “that everything in existence came about as a result of ceaseless motion among the forces of nature. Everything is a product of accumulated accident. There is no design. There is no law. There is no God ... Nevertheless, man is supposed to have the accidental good fortune to possess the highest intelligence in existence. This is said to make him the real god of the universe.”[9]

With man the highest consciousness in the world, no other being limited what man was capable of. When God existed, man could never be all knowing like God, and the doctrine of sin taught that man’s thinking was limited and prone to error. But believing God to be dead, one conclusion became clear: humanity applying its mind to the world could manage nature through the power of science. Science is the accumulation of knowledge for power over the environment and nature. Mastering these insights, Marx and Engels believed that their philosophical assumptions were superior to all previous thinkers. They thought that the laws of an unchanging world with absolute truths were discredited by, “modern materialism [which] embraces the more recent discoveries of natural science.”[10] They knew that people who believed in absolute moral rules were their natural enemies. The critics of the pair said, “there are … eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc. that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality … it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.”[11] Marx and Engels did not deny this; they agreed with it. They simply replied, “The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.”[12] Marx and Engels believed that ideas were shaped by the environment and not human choice. As Marx said, “are men free to choose this or that form of society? By no means.”[13] They saw the economic conditions of each era establishing what was right and wrong. Thus, an unchangeable morality did not exist. Rather, moral laws were how the wealthy protected their property. Rules were instruments by which greedy individuals continued to cheat others. As Engels said, “Thou shalt not steal. Does this law thereby become an eternal moral law? By no means.”[14]

Their scientific understanding enabled them to see, “the process of evolution of humanity” which led to progress. Thus communism, like many people’s faith in science today, believed that all questions and problems will be answered by the human mind and scientific investigation. Such thinking assumes the human mind can bring about perfect knowledge. With such knowledge morality could be done away with. Engels said, “we therefore reject every attempt to impose on us any moral dogma whatsoever ... We maintain on the contrary that all former moral theories are the product, in the last analysis, of the economic stage which society had reached at that particular epoch.”[15]

[1] W. Cleon Skousen, The Naked Communist (Salt Lake City: Izzard Ink Publishing, 2015), pg 11, Kindle Edition. [2] Ibid, pg 203. [3] Ibid, pg 11. [4] Ibid, pg 13. [5] Ibid, pg 25. [6] Friedrich Engels, Anti-Duhring (Wallachia Press, 2015), loc 359, Kindle Edition. [7] Ibid, loc 1033-1100. [8] W. Cleon Skousen, The Naked Communist (Salt Lake City: Izzard Ink Publishing, 2015), pg 25, Kindle Edition. [9] Ibid, pg 25. Vladimir Tismaneanu, The Devil in History (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012), pg 181, Kindle Edition. [10] Friedrich Engels, Anti-Duhring (Wallachia Press, 2015), loc 199, Kindle Edition. [11] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (A Public Domain Book), loc 296, Kindle Edition. [12] W. Cleon Skousen, The Naked Communist (Salt Lake City: Izzard Ink Publishing, 2015), pg 34, Kindle Edition [13] Ibid, pg 30. [14] Friedrich Engels, Anti-Duhring (Wallachia Press, 2015), loc 1301, Kindle Edition. [15] Ibid, loc 1395. Vladimir Tismaneanu, The Devil in History (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012), pg 90, Kindle Edition.