 It investigates whether the undercurrent of violence and lawlessness constantly exhibited by the actual behaviour of Marxist regimes may in fact be a natural consequence of Marxist theory itself. Indeed, Marx viewed laws basically in terms of guaranteeing and justifying class oppression, thus advancing the position that laws in a socialist state must be nothing more than the imposition (by a political elite) of the “dictatorship of the proletariat”.
Marxism and religion
In order to better understand Marxism, it is necessary to explore its religious dimensions. In many respects Marxism is no less religious or dogmatic than the traditional religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. As a matter of fact, Marxism contains in itself a complete worldview that includes an explanation of the origin of the universe and an eschatological theory concerning the final destiny of humankind.
In a personal letter to him, Marx actually reveals that Darwin’s Origin of Species was indeed very important, as it had provided him ‘with the basis in natural science for the class struggle in history’.
Theologically, Marxism declares that God does not, cannot, and must not exist. Instead, Marxism is based on the conviction (a genuine opiate of the people?) that history is constantly evolving towards a certain direction and that the proletariat is the redemptive force of humanity. Thus Marx declared: “History is the judge, its executioner the proletariat.”1
Since Marx believed he had discovered the secret of perfecting the human condition, politics became for him a form of secular religion, whereby the ideal of human salvation would be accomplished by the proletariat’s revolutionary actions in history. History was interpreted progressively by Marx, moving by means of social struggle. He believed that the final stage of human evolution actually transcends class struggle, when the eschatological consummation of global communism is at last achieved.2 Comparing such Marxist eschatology with that contained in the Bible in the Book of Revelation, David Koyzis comments:
“Much as the scriptures teaches the ultimate victory of Jesus Christ over his enemies and the reign of the righteous over the new earth in the kingdom of God, so also does Marxism promises an eschatological consummation of human history. This does not, of course, mean that there is not a battle to be waged or work to be done. Indeed, there is much of both. But in fighting for the classless society, the proletariat does so fully confident that it is fighting not against history but with it.”3
If the god of Marxism is to be understood as an evolutionary process towards communism, then its devil is constituted by the reactionary forces that either deny or hinder this progressive ideology. These reactionaries are destined to receive their final destruction in the fires of global revolution.4 Thus in the opinion of Leonardo Boff, a leading contributor to Marxist-oriented liberation theology in Latin America, one day the world will face a “final apocalyptic confrontation of the forces of good [communists] and evil [anti-communists], and then the blessed millennium.”5 The violent suppression of those anti-communist reactionaries, he says, will represent the advent of “God’s Kingdom on Earth, and the advent of a new society of a socialistic type”.6
Curiously, in his 1987 book O Socialismo Como Desafio Teológico (Socialism as a Theological Challenge), Boff argued that the highly oppressive former communist regimes in Eastern Europe, especially the former Soviet Union and Romania, “offer[ed] the best objective possibility of living more easily in the spirit of the Gospels and of observing the Commandments.”7 Returning from a visit to Romania and the former Soviet Union in 1987, just a few years before the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, Boff averred that these notorious regimes were, in his opinion, “highly ethical and … morally clean”, and that he had not noticed any restrictions in those countries on freedom of expression.8
Marxist theologians like Boff have refused to accept any poss