The State is my Shepherd

“Capitalism is the way of the devil and exploitation. If you really want to look at things through the eyes of Jesus Christ–who I think was the first socialist–only socialism can really create a genuine society.”--Hugo Chávez, Socialist dictator of Venezuela

Indoctrination comes in many forms, but religious indoctrination is certainly the most effective. In recent history, Socialism, the economic system and political philosophy, sought to replace Christianity with its government-based worldview. Vladimir Lenin, one of the leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution deliberately set out to recruit Christians into his political party in order to educate them in the spirit of the Socialist programs. He knew they were susceptible to indoctrination. Ludwig Feuerbach, a predecessor to Marxism/Socialism, advocated combating religion in order to renovate it and to invent a new, ‘exalted’ religion. I call this new religion the cult of government.

In the West, Socialist dogma is presented as an alternative to Christianity. The similarities between Christianity and Socialism make this possible. Socialist thought is rooted in Christianity. Karl Marx, the father of Marxism/Socialism, was deeply impacted by religion. Although Marx’s father was Jewish, the family became Christian when Marx was young. Judeo-Christian concepts were instilled at an early age. In one school essay, a young Marx reveals his early Christian indoctrination and his solidarity with the oppressed by writing, “Who should not gladly endure sorrows, when he knows that through his continuing in Christ, through his works God is honored?”

As a young man, Marx was introduced to the work of Friedrich Hegel, who he cited consistently
throughout his life. Marx was part of the Young Hegelians, a group of influential leftists who promoted their particular interpretation of Hegel’s work. Because of his religious upbringing, there is no doubt Marx was drawn to the Hegel’s use of Christian vocabulary.

Hegel concentrates on the sinful aspects of man’s condition. He cites the Christian apostle Paul who spoke of humankind being alienated in their thinking because of sin and ultimate redemption through Jesus. Marx saw the oppressed as needing salvation from the evil capitalists just as Jesus and Paul voiced the need for salvation from this world of sin. Both offered a plan of redemption—one though the State and the other through vicarious redemption.

While Marx ultimately distinguished himself from Hegel in many ways, the foundation of his dialectical materialism and other concepts are rooted in Hegel’s concepts, which were laden with rich Christian concepts of oppression, alienation, submission, and redemption. Hegel’s Master-Serf dialectic mixed with Marx’s inherited Christian empathy for the oppressed assembled a foundation from which the Marxist concept of class struggle was built.

Socialists see humankind as corrupt and in need of guidance through laws and regulations while Christianity sees humans as alienated from the supernatural realm and in need of “spiritual” guidance. Both attempt to legislate morality according to their precepts and standards. Just as religion uses threat of a torturous afterlife as a deterrent from its moral standards, many Marxist or left-leaning governments dictate morality through threats of imprisonment, bans and Pigovian or “sin” taxes. The idea of a sin tax is to place an excessive tax on a product or service as a means to deter their use. In many communist countries, pornography is entirely outlawed. In the United States, a progressively democratic-socialist state, there are numerous sin taxes, such as the excessive tax on cigarettes and environmental laws. In recent years, the US has instituted countless new sin taxes and proposes countless others—such as “fat” taxes on fattening food and carbon taxes on companies to reduce pollution. This cult of government, as religion, seeks to shape the morals of its citizens to conform to State-sanctioned morality through taxes and bans.

Christianity and Marxism/Socialism are nearly identical. The only glaring difference is one
postulates a supernatural utopia and the other an earthly one. Both must manipulate and control their adherents to achieve their utopias. Human freedom must be suppressed—whether it’s through new laws and regulations, through an unfeasible religious moral code or through fear and intimidation. Each has setup elite groups to facilitate the methodical overthrow of individual freedom and replace it with a collective morality, which leads to tyrannical behavior by the
leadership in the end.

In his essay “Two Concepts of Liberty”, the great 20^th philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin describes how governments seek to control its citizens as children and how they ultimately fall into tyranny and dictatorship, thus destroying freedom and brutalizing its individuals. This has been demonstrated throughout history with the French Revolution, the Soviet Union, the Crusades, the Taliban, and other Islamic governments. He states facetiously about the British Empire in an interview, “Human beings are children. We must first herd them together, create certain institutions, make them obey orders, and we hope later they will see how well we’ve done for them.... It always leads to bad consequences in the end.”

Marx, Hegel, and Feuerbach understood the value of Christian indoctrination. Christianity emphasizes empathy toward the poor and downtrodden. It teaches people to be dependent. They play on fears and demonize individualism. Marxists/Socialists have seized these doctrines and incorporated them into their dogma. They view us as children and the goal is a massive nanny state, whose ultimate end is totalitarianism and tyranny.

A freethinker opposes both religion AND socialism.