The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism’s Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

This event is part of the Intermarium Lecture Series sponsored by The Institute of World Politics.

About the lecture: “Thus Heaven I’ve forfeited, I know it full well. My soul, once true to God, is chosen for Hell.” So wrote Karl Marx in an 1837 poem. Those lines were, for Marx, at least partly biographical. Likewise disturbing were his openings lines in his Communist Manifesto: “A specter is haunting Europe, the specter of communism. All of the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter.” Karl Marx unleashed more than a mere economic program. The man was less an economist than a revolutionary. Marx had a favorite line from Mephistopheles, the devil character in Goethe’s Faust: “Everything that exists deserves to perish.” What Marx wanted was not a mere economic revolution; he wanted a revolution against human nature, to annihilate the entire order, to burn down the house, to undermine “all religion, all morality.” He called for the “forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.” What Marx advocated had a destructive dimension, a spiritual dimension, even a diabolical dimension. In his latest book, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism’s Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration, Dr. Paul Kengor explores this chilling side of Marx and the Marxist revolution that still rages today. Join us to hear Professor Kengor on this fascinating and disturbing subject.

About the speaker: Paul Kengor, Ph.D., is professor of political science at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania, and a New York Times bestselling author of over a dozen books. He is senior director and chief academic fellow at the Institute for Faith & Freedom and former visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His articles have appeared in publications from the Washington Post and USA Today to the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. He is a longtime columnist and senior editor for The American Spectator. Kengor is an internationally recognized authority on (among other topics) Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, communism, socialism, and conservatism.