Page 14 - The Basic Conflict between Christianity and Communism

mechanical and removes from him the right or necessity of moral choice.

Both of these evil movements fertilized the human soil of Europe for the reception
of the Marxian lie in the field of economics and government. Indeed at the grave of
Marx, Engels eulogized him as having performed as great a service to social relations

as Darwin’s theory had to natural science, showing the close relation of these two
malevolent influences upon the human mind.

One writer in giving a conclusion of an analysis of Marxism says: “It is in the last

analysis a body of ideas which has filled the vacuum created by the breakdown of
organized religion, as a result of an increasing secularization of thought during the last
three centuries, and it can be combated by opposing to it a conception of life based
upon wholly different principles.”

The Marxian Theory

The Marxian interpretation of history is summed up from the opening sentence of The

Communist Manifesto (issued in the year 1847): “The history of all hitherto existing
societies is the history of class struggle.” Marx avers that “At an early stage of human
history certain members of society acquired control over the productive forces.” This
finally led to the capitalistic system which has enabled the minority to live by the
labor of the majority. All wars, all unrest, all iniquity is to be traced to the fact that

“certain members of society” came to control the sources and means of production
and have exploited ruthlessly the others who did not possess this control.

Human society therefore fell into two distinct classes, the Superstructure and the
Substructure (called in German the oberbau and the unterbau). All religion, ethics,
laws, and institutions of society were and are simply devices invented by the
Superstructure to vindicate and maintain their power and with which to forge the
chains upon the people of this Substructure. As we have pointed out, the Christian

Philosophy teaches that at the Fall of Man the whole race was plunged into sin and
that all of “Man’s inhumanity to man” that has made “countless thousands mourn” in
whatever grade of society has been due to sin in the heart. Marx however comes up

with the notion that inclination of men to take advantage of one another is a
corruption introduced into history by the private ownership of “the means of
production.”

Of course anyone who sets out to show that from the beginning of human history
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