I Wish I Still Knew How to Play My Trombone

Marxism's Evilness

As someone who is sometimes critical of capitalism and enjoys telling people who hate Marxism that I’m a communist, I’ve heard many arguments about the EVIL of Marxism. This “evilness” usually has two major origins: Marxism’s atheism and its materialist view of history.

Let me take the latter first: I do agree that Marxism is based on the idea that the history of society should be read as a conflict between social classes and various production (labor, etc); in this way, it is materialistic. But that does not mean it is materialistic in the sense that it necessarily denies all spirituality. If Marx denied people have souls, that is tangential and not necessary to a materialistic view of history.

Let me give an example: Darwinism. Evolution is based solely on materialistic findings and foundations. Its conclusions do not take spirituality or human souls into consideration. However, this does not mean it is an argument against spirituality. At the time, people did think this was the case, though. Religious saw this scientific interpretation to biological history as problematic, since it didn’t offer us an interpretation of spirituality, nor did it seem to place God at the rightful head of the universe. Hopefully now most of us recognize that a materialist interpretation of something is not necessarily an argument against any or everything non-material.

As for the atheism “inherent” in Marxism: yes, if we’re discussing a type of Marxist interpretation that denies God, then it is anti-spirituality. However, it is my belief that Marx’s atheism was tangential to his material view of history, politics, and revolution. He may have desired the two to be interconnected, but that doesn’t mean they are.

Let me use Evolution again: Darwin, although initially spurred by a religious belief to reveal God’s Providence in nature, ended an atheist: he thought he disproved God and His Providence. But he wasn’t correct, just as Marx wasn’t, just as other people aren’t correct in trumpeting Darwin’s or Marx’s incorrect conclusions.

Hellooooo .... ? ?

A dry wind rustles through the weeds now spreading in the cracks in the streets and the sidewalks and at the edges of buildings. Here and there curtains drift out through open windows, as though the ghosts of the empty rooms were leaving...perhaps for good. Altogether it is a dry, empty place, not bereft of objects, buildings, furniture...but certainly bereft of life. It has the eerie emptiness of a place that was not always empty.
A lone traveler enters the town, the first sign of life in a long, long time. This place once held meaning for him, but all meaning is lost because no one visits here anymore. He writes a quick note down on a table in the place which was the public sphere of his companions...but he wonders if any will ever know that he wrote it...?