You’ve come a long way, comrade.
      A stylish new edition of The Communist Manifesto aims to make Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels the latest in radical chic.
      The slender volume is being republished as a glossy $13 hardcover for release in New York and London on May Day. The fashionable department store Barneys is thinking about it for window display.
      The publisher says the 1848 work speaks to a sense on Wall Street that the party can’t go on forever.
      ‘There’s a sense of anxiety tied to the millennium. People don’t believe things will just carry on, with markets rising forever,’ says Colin Robinson, head of Verso publishers, which is printing 20,000 copies on the 150th anniversary of the manifesto. ‘Marx’s description of a capitalist system prone to shocks and convulsions captures that mood.’
      The revolutionary book, now with a rippling red-flag cover, has become fodder for capitalist fantasy.
      With a handle attached, the book could make a snazzy accessory to a designer dress, says Simon Doonan, creative director of Barneys on Madison Avenue. One could sashay toward the new millennium, the 19th century words of Marx and Engels dangling at one’s side.
      Doonan is toying with the idea of featuring the Manifesto—along with red lipstick—in the window as ‘conceptual art.’ His assistants are looking for the right lipstick—preferably with a Russian-sounding name.
      With communism gasping around the world, ‘it’s OK to look at the book as camp,’ he says.
      Around Wall Street, the very capital of capitalism, the Borders bookstores at the World Trade Center plans to give the book center display in the front of the store. Barnes & Noble will likewise market the Manifesto at its 483 superstores as ‘a storefront feature.’
      ‘Enough time has passed since the fall of the Iron Curtain so Marxism can again be seen as a utopian philosophy,’ says John Kulka, a Barnes & Noble merchandise manager.

      The new edition was designed by two trendy, Soviet-born, New York artists known as Komar and Melamid.
      Written during the Industrial Revolution the Manifesto called the working class to arms against the bourgeoise.
      The Manifesto opens with the famous words “A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism.” It predicted that a catastrophic cycle of booms and busts would befall the new free-market system.
      The 23-page pamphlet was ‘the most influential single piece of political writing since the French Revolution,’ historian Eric Hobsbawm, guru of Britain’s socialists, writes in the introduction to the 96-page edition.
      The Communist Party USA, which is based in New York and claims 25,000 members, could use a little marketing.
      ‘Cool,’ spokeswoman Terrie Albano says. ‘It wasn’t too long ago when everyone was saying communism was dead. Here it is, resurrected.’”
      We invite our readers to replace a few key words in the above article and witness the results.
      “With Nazism gasping around the world, it’s OK to look at Mein Kampf as camp.”
      “Enough time has passed since the fall of Hitler so Nazism can again be seen as a utopian philosophy.”
      “The new edition of Mein Kampf was designed by two trendy, German-born, New York Nazi artists known as Adolph Jr. and Adolph Sr.”
      “Doonan is toying with the idea of featuring Mein Kampf—along with Eva Braun’s lipsticks—in the window as ‘conceptual art.’”
      “With a handle attached, Mein Kampf could make a snazzy accessory to a designer dress.”
      “Cool,” spokeswoman Frau Marlene Deitrich says. “It wasn’t too long ago when everyone was saying Nazism was dead. Here it is, resurrected thanks to Barneys, Borders and Barnes & Noble. Who would have ever thunk it. Heil, Hitler.”

                                                    David A. Noebel, for the editors

What Makes Students Susceptible to Communist Seduction?
By Dr. Fred C. Schwarz

O wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae many a blunder free us,
And foolish notion.
      Robert Burns

      Communism is not dead in the United States and in many other countries because colleges and universities are constantly graduating students who are potential Communist recruits. No one is born a Communist. Becoming one requires a conscious act of will, a decision.
      Some, however, are born with Communist parents, and are influenced by their parents. These are sometimes called “Red-diaper babies.” Many of the leaders of the rioting that wracked many college campuses during the 1960s were such “babies.” Many factors contribute to the decision to become a Communist. Some are intellectual and some psychological. Disenchantment with capitalism is one significant factor.
      Karl Marx regarded capitalism as a disease with deadly consequences for mankind. He presented a logical proposition that has convinced millions: capitalism must be destroyed before a healthy and happy society can be created.
      A word of warning! The Marxist critique of capitalism is very logical and persuasive. It convinced even the great scholar and scientist, Albert Einstein. It is not surprising that it might also convince intelligent but inexperienced students.
      When discussing a disease, it is appropriate to emphasize its negative features and devote little attention to the positive qualities, if any. Nevertheless, in The Communist Manifesto, Marx does acknowledge the great achievements of capitalism in the past, as well as predicting that it must produce a deadly future.
      The Marxist critique of the capitalist “disease” features symptomatology, etiology, therapy, and prognosis.
      The symptoms include unemployment, imperialism, depression, and war.

      Etiology is the cause of the disease symptoms. Diagnosis is the discovery of the etiology. Marx indicts the “surplus value” of labor, or profit, as the virus that causes capitalism to create unemployment, depression and war. Here is a summary of his argument:
      Capitalism does two things: 1) It creates goods, called commodities, for distribution by sale, and 2) It distributes money with which these goods can be purchased. An economy is healthy when the money distributed is adequate to purchase the commodities produced.
      Marx claimed that the value of the goods is determined by the amount of labor expended in their production. Therefore, the money distributed to the producers should be equal to the total value of the goods produced. However, the nature of capitalism makes it impossible to maintain this balance for a substantial period, as the full value of the goods is never paid to the producers.
      Part is paid to the workers who create the goods, while a portion is retained as profit by those who own the means of production, such as tools with which the goods are produced. Marx called this retained profit the “surplus value” of labor, and contended that it is the basic cause of the symptomatology of the capitalist disease.
      Because of the retained surplus value, the money in circulation is never enough to buy all the goods produced. Therefore, production inevitably leads to over-production, which then leads to unemployment. Because the dismissed workers lose their wages, the money in circulation is reduced and a vicious cycle is created: overproduction, unemployment, reduced purchasing power, accumulation of more surpluses, more unemployment, and finally depression, with economic stagnation and the social consequences of mass misery.
      To break the log-jam, a way must be found to distribute money without creating goods that can be purchased. One thing that does this is war. During war, great numbers of workers are employed making munitions that cannot be purchased by the general populace. The wages paid are available to purchase the accumulated goods. In due course the accumulated surplus of goods is purchased and a shortage develops. When the war ends, there is a demand for goods, so employment and production recommence and the cycle commences all over again. Thus, depression and war are inherent features of capitalism.
      As previously noted, this argument is logical and persuasive. This does not mean that its conclusions are true.

To reach a true conclusion more than logical deductions are needed. The premises on which the argument is based must also be true—and complete. Premises that are incomplete can lead logically to absurd conclusions.
      I like to illustrate this by proving “logically” that an increase in pregnancy will lower the population. My premises are: 1) An increase in pregnancy will increase the number of deaths. This is true, unfortunately. Still births and maternal deaths during child-birth do occur. 2) An increase in the number of deaths will lower the population.
      Therefore, by impeccable logic, an increase in pregnancy will lower the population, Q.E.D.
      This edifice of nonsense is constructed by selecting two percent of the truth and ignoring 98 percent. I ignored the 98 percent of living babies that result from pregnancy. The conclusion was false because my premises were incomplete.
      The premises on which Marx based his critique of capitalism are incomplete. Other factors besides labor contribute to the value of goods. These include: 1) the availability of raw materials, 2) the psychology of the consumers, and 3) the variations in the purchasing power of money due to the different rates of the expenditure. The same money, spent three times, might distribute three times the quantity of goods as if it were spent only once.
      Having diagnosed the guilt of capitalism as the creator of unemployment, depression and war, Marx proceeded to discover and prescribe the appropriate therapy—revolution.
      The word, “revolution,” might have many meanings, but Marx and his “alter ego,” Engels, acknowledged, or even boasted, that this revolution must rely on force and violence. Their Manifesto talks of digging the graves of the owners of the means of production, the bourgeoisie, and of the creation of the weapons to eliminate them, along with the creation of the men who will use the weapons.
      According to Marx, the future was predetermined. The outcome of the revolution was certain. The workers, or proletariat, would triumph and the bourgeoisie would be wiped out or made impossible.
      Once a student has been convinced that capitalism causes depression and war, recruitment to Communism becomes more likely. The factors that lead to a decision to become a Communist include: 1) disenchantment with capitalism, 2) materialist philosophy, 3) intellectual pride, and 4) unfulfilled religious need.

      Materialism is taught or assumed in many higher institutions of learning. The existence of God is denied or ignored and the basis for a moral code is destroyed. If people are merely animals, why should it be wrong to treat them as animals? There are obviously many undesirable features in current capitalist society and techniques successful in improving other animals can be applied to improve humanity. As the Russian philosopher and author, Fyodor Dostoevsky stated, “If there is no God, anything is permissible.” The psalmist is more blunt, “The fool has said in his heart, there is no God.”
      Students have many admirable qualities, but humility is not usually one of them. They have little hesitation in advocating and supporting their chosen cause and are prepared to sacrifice for it.
      For human animal husbandry to be successful, there must be husbandmen. Intellectual pride may convince some that they are members of the elite who have been selected by their intellect and talents to membership in the chosen few, the Communists, who will remake mankind.
      Students are confronted with perplexing questions such as: What is the purpose of life? To what cause can I devote my time, talents and energy so that I shall not have to live in vain? They have a religious need.
      In 1940, I had my first debate with a Communist. It took place at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. My opponent was Max Julius, president of the student body and a member of the Central Committee of the Australian Communist Party. The subject was, ‘Is Communism a science or a religion?’ I contended it was a religion. It possessed a doctrine of God viz., atheism; it had a doctrine of man viz.., an evolving animal; it had a doctrine of sin viz., capitalism; it had a doctrine of redemption viz., revolution and it had a doctrine of the end times viz., Communism. Events during the past 58 years have repeatedly confirmed that conviction.
      Numerous disillusioned Communist leaders now acknowledge that they were activists of an atheistic religion. Communism gave meaning to their lives and temporarily satisfied their religious needs.
      The apostle James writes: “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” Jesus, not Marx, is the leader who can fulfill the religious needs of students.

The Three Faces of Marxism
by Dr. Ronald H. Nash

      When someone identifies himself as a Marxist these days, he might mean any one of a number of things.  The basic varieties of Marxism have become so incompatible that advocates of the different versions fight among themselves as to which is the true Marxism.  In the order in which they appeared, the three dominant versions are: (1) Social-Democratic Marxism, (2) Marxism-Leninism, and (3) Humanistic Marxism.
      Social-Democratic Marxism—Because the Social-Democratic interpretation of Marx was the first view to develop, it is sometimes called the classical view of Marx.  The major proponents of this interpretation include Friedrich Engels (following Marx’s death), the German Karl Kautsky (1854-1938), the Russian George Plekhanov (1856-1918), and the American Daniel DeLeon (1852-1914).  As its name implies, advocates of the Social-Democratic version believe that Marxism is compatible with democracy and political freedom.  They believe that the ‘revolution’ Marx and Engels wrote about could be realized through peaceful means—namely, through democratic elections.  What is especially important to note with regard to this interpretation   is that the “movement toward socialism is a movement toward democracy.”  As philosopher Sidney Hook explains this version of Marxism: “Political democracy must be used to achieve a complete democracy by extending democratic values and principles into economic and social life.  Where democracy does not exist the Socialist movement must introduce it . . . . Where democracy already exists, the working class can achieve power by peaceful parliamentary means.”
      Marxism-Leninism—The second major interpretation of Marx to develop was the brainchild of Lenin.  A major deviation from the Social-Democratic view that was held by the Russian Socialists known as Mensheviks, Lenin’s view became the official position of his party, the Bolsheviks.  Lenin used his theory to justify the Communist Revolution of October 1917 that overthrew the democratic Mensheviks.  There is no place for democracy in Lenin’s version of Marxism.  For Lenin, the Communist Party knows what is best for the workers, whether they agree with the conclusion of the Party or not.  Marxism-Leninism is totalitarian by definition.

      Humanistic Marxism—This  last version of Marxism will be examined in much greater detail because it is the view most often held by Christian Marxists.  The humanistic interpretation of Marx differs from the other forms of Marxism in terms of the importance it attaches to a number of Marx’s early unpublished manuscripts.  Several things should be noted about these early writings: (1) Marx made no effort to publish them.  Because he never displayed much reluctance about publishing many apparently   less important writings, some have concluded that Marx did not regard these early scribblings as worthy of publication.  (2) Marx wrote these early manuscripts four years before he and Engels published the Manifesto of the Communist Party in 1848.  In the opinion of many Marxist scholars, Marx wrote these early manuscripts before he himself even became a Marxist!  (3) The early manuscripts were not published (in German) until 1932.  Publication of English translations would come years later.
      The most important doctrine contained in the early manuscripts is Marx’s teaching about alienation.  The doctrine of alienation is the trademark of the Humanistic version of Marx.  It is also a centerpiece of the system that many so-called Christian Marxists have developed as a result of their reconstruction of Marx’s thought.
      Marx is thought to have identified four different but related forms of worker alienation.  First, capitalism causes the worker to become alienated from that which he produces.  Because the capitalist system creates false needs and provides false satisfactions, workers are manipulated into wanting things and then seduced into buying them.  The worker becomes dominated and controlled by the things he is forced to make.
      Second, the worker is estranged from the labor process itself.  Of course, it takes little effort to note how many men and women hate their jobs.  This alienation is not restricted to those who must labor at menial, repetitive, boring, dirty, or degrading tasks.  Even professional golfers and philosophers have been known to hold an occasional loathing for their jobs.  It is easy to see, therefore, how people who become aware of this second form of alienation can believe that something fairly profound can be mined in Marx’s early writings.
      Third, the worker under capitalism becomes alienated from other men and women, a fact easily observed by noting the widespread competitiveness, hostility, and animosity among human beings.  Proponents of the Humanistic version of Marx want us to believe that all manifestations of these traits in the modern world can be blamed on capitalism.

      In the fourth kind of alienation, the worker not only becomes alienated from what he produces, from his work, and from other workers—he finally becomes alienated from himself.
      Because human alienation in any of these four forms is serious business, Christians should be concerned about it.  What is much less clear is the extent to which Marx should be given credit for discovering the problem or for recommending a solution.  For one thing, the theory of alienation is neither unique to Marx nor original with him.  It can be found in a number of thinkers before Marx, and it was developed independently by several writers after Marx.  Moreover, human alienation is hardly unique to capitalist societies.  It is difficult to believe that a garbage collector in Moscow [or Beijing] is any happier with his job than a garbage collector

in Boston, Cleveland, or Beverly Hills.  Alienation and dehumanization are serious problems, but it simply is not true that they result exclusively from conditions existing in capitalist societies and vanish once those societies have become Socialist.  Human alienation is no more an exclusive effect of capitalism than baldness.
      Strangely missing from most Christian discussions of alienation is a recognition of a fifth variety of human alienation, a type ignored by Marx.  Scripture teaches that every member of the human race is alienated from God.  In fact, the Bible clearly implies that all of the forms of human alienation that concern contemporary Marxists result in some way from man’s more fundamental alienation from his Creator.  Recognition of this Biblical truth could introduce an important new dimension into discussions of alienation.

Jesus Christ, Karl Marx and Jacques Ellul, part 1
by Dr. Michael Bauman

      Theologians quickly discover that death and taxes do not exhaust the list of life’s inevitabilities. Not only do we die and pay; we think—however well or however poorly. Because such considerations are foundational and pervasive, among the things we cannot avoid thinking about are our relationship to the transcendent, if any, and our relationship to our neighbor, whether near or far away. That is, human nature and relationships being what they now are, human existence is inescapably theological and political. Thus the question is never whether or not we will have a theology or a political ideology, but whether or not the ones we have are any good.
      Ellulism—the theology and politics of Jacques Ellul—I am convinced, is seriously defective. It is, nevertheless, widely held and respected among evangelicals. The burden of these articles is to bring its flaws to view and to explain why I believe about it as I do. My agenda is threefold: first, to expose its exegetical shortcomings; second, to reveal its political and philosophical inadequacies; and third, to trace its ideological roots back to their source.
      According to Ellul, the Gospel [of Jesus Christ] should not be tied to any prevalent political or economic ideology. To do so, he says, is to degenerate Christianity, which “was originally an anti-ideology.” To do so also entails a dangerous conformity to the world, which Ellul sees as a transgression against our freedom in Christ. But Christianity is not the politically or economically ideology-free (or even 

ideology-neutral) religion Ellul describes. It most assuredly does have political and economic proclivities, or tendencies, of a definite sort, though they are not the sort Ellul identifies or prefers. To them I will return later. Furthermore, Ellul, as a Christian anarchist, does not escape committing the “error” (his word) of fusing Christianity to a political ideology, a practice about which he has warned others. He himself has fused the radical politics of the anarchist left with a skewed vision of Christianity and Scripture.
      Ellul is convinced that both Testaments inculcate anarchism. This he repeatedly declares in the process of “reconciling anarchism and Christianity.” “I do not intend,” he writes, “to abandon the biblical message in the slightest, since it seems to me...that biblical thought leads straight to anarchism—anarchism is the only ‘anti-political political position’ in harmony with Christian thought.” “Both the Old and New Testaments take exception to all political power.”
      “We must uphold the sure and certain fact that the Bible brings us a message that is against power, against the state, and against politics.” By so arguing, however, Ellul has improperly recast the Bible into a leftwing manifesto. This transformation he tries to support with what, to me at least, seem grotesque exegetical contortions that deface the biblical teaching on government.
      According to Ellul, the Old Testament “always challenges political power in itself where the ‘nations’ are concerned....The government of a foreign people never appears in the Old Testament as legitimate or satisfactory.” But, as is almost embarrassingly obvious, the Old Testament never impugns “political power in itself” among gentile nations; rather, it excoriates the abuses those powers sometimes perpetrate. Nor, contrary to Ellul, does the Old 

Testament challenge the political legitimacy of all foreign regimes, regardless of whether or not the reigning politics were monarchical, oligarchical, or even (as was the case in some portions of ancient Greece) ostensibly democratic. It does not challenge gentile regimes based upon whether or not those regimes were legitimated, or whether or not they ruled by the free consent of the governed, which, along with hereditary rule (and apart from any direct command of God),

seem to me to be the only bases upon which genuine political legitimacy could ever be established. In the Old Testament, the question of gentile political legitimacy is not in view, much less is it always decided in the negative, as Ellul insists. Furthermore, the application of the very concept of political legitimacy to Old Testament times and conditions is itself a largely anachronistic application.  

(To be continued)

r    “In my country [France], it is still possible to provoke a scandal by raising in public the issue of the crimes committed by Communism—and an even greater scandal by suggesting that not only in the enormity of its crimes but in its very nature, Soviet Communism can be compared with that other great evil of our century, Nazism.  This was illustrated once again by a recent French best-seller, The Black Book of Communism, an 846-page compilation by six historians with an introduction that points out a number of commonalities between the two totalitarian systems.  The book has raised a storm of controversy in intellectual and political circles, and has even caused an uproar in parliament.”  Alain Besancon, Commentary, January 1998, p. 24

r    “So great was the triumph of the Communist definition of reality, however, that even today it remains deeply embedded in historical consciousness.  French high-school and university textbooks, for example, still ‘read’ the political spectrum from Left to Right, going from the Soviet Union on the Left, to the liberal democracies (with their own Lefts and Rights), to the various fascisms (German, Italian, Spanish, and so forth).  This is but an attenuated version of what might be called the Soviet Vulgate.”  Alain Besancon, Commentary, January 1998, p. 26, 7

r    “Much of this century has been governed, in the Western world, by Freudianism, Marxism, and evolution.  Freudianism is certainly not dead, but it is no longer regnant.  The sustained assaults it has received are now being noted even by the popular media.  Psychology is still horribly locked into ‘selfism,’ but even that stance is increasingly under attack.  In its quest to be a world-dominating philosophy, Marxism is a spent force.  And now, as we saw earlier, there are signs that evolution itself is coming under competent attack.  Such assaults must be maintained.  They must be well directed.  Sometimes they require courage; they can cost you promotions, advancement, even your job.  Even though we can praise what is good in it, postmodernism should be exposed to the same sort of ruthless analysis that it deploys against earlier intellectual movements.”  D.A. Carson, The Gagging of God (1996), p. 426

r    “French intellectuals and politicians are in an uproar over the recently published 846-page best seller, The Black Book of Communism (Robert Laffont) written by six historians, which documents that worldwide this century communism has been responsible for the slaughter of at least 100 million people—and that communism and Nazism are morally and criminally equal.  The French Communist Party, which has three cabinet ministers in the French government today, has a long history of defending the evils of Lenin, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro and Mao Tse-tung.  French Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin proudly defends the Communists,

claiming that they have ‘learned the lessons of history.’  Jospin has not expressed similar sentiments about aged Nazis or the skinheads and neo-Nazis that populate France and Europe.”  Human Events, January 16, 1998, p. 2

r    “The impact of [Fidel] Castro’s ascendency was immediate on campuses in the United States:  to a larger extent, departments of history and political science became active supporters   of his communist policies.  American schools hired many south-of-the-border intellectuals, Havana sympathizers unsuccessfully trying to implement similar strategies in their military-ruled countries.  Those new hires went predominantly into Spanish department....The refugees moving north had a very clear vision.  While they would live inside the belly of the beast, they would never adopt the American Dream.  This meant becoming pariahs rather than active participants in the internal intellectual debate; it meant an outright rejection of their student’s values and worldview....This intelligentsia used the classroom not only to advance its Marxist views but also to misrepresent an entire civilization.  Latin America was a land left unfinished by God; it lived in a state of perpetual suffering.  Mass culture, American and European influence, and foreign economic investment, were all evil.”  Ilan Stavans, “Against the Ostrich Syndrom,” in Academic Questions, Winter 1997-98, p. 61, 62,63

r    “As Eric Voegelin pointed out, gnostics are radically dissatisfied with the ‘Order of Being,’ with the world as God created it.  They categorically reject the idea that there is a basically good and determinative ‘Order of Being,’ a way things ought to be because God has designed them so.  In order to transform the world, they must oppose the Order of Being, and therefore they seek to murder God.  Thus in Voegelin’s view Marxism as a modern variant of Gnosticism quite naturally sought to eradicate religion.”  Harold O. J.  Brown,  The Religion and Society Report, March 1998, p. 2,3

r “At the state capitol in Madison, Wisconsin, the confessing atheist organization, Freedom from Religion Foundation, for the second year in a row put up a sign next to the Christmas tree.  ‘In this season of the Winter Solstice, may reason prevail.  There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell.  There is only our material world.  Religion is but a myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.’  On the backside of the sign they put the admonition, “Thou shalt not steal.’  Sez who?”  First Things, March 1998, p. 77

r    “Radical feminists teach that marriage is slavery, faith in God is a male-crafted prison, and abortion is a declaration of independence.”  Helen Chenoweth, November 29, 1996 letter