Recently I have been apple picking two days a week. It’s physically demanding work; however, it’s not mentally engaging. I found this a blessing because it allowed me to listen to several podcasts over the last couple of weeks. As I listened to Christian men and pastors preaching and teaching about what has been happening in North America, it has encouraged me to tackle a subject we as Canadians need to quickly learn – Marxism.
The Gruber brothers from Carpe Fide have a convicting and eye-opening episode on this subject. You can listen to it here (episode #24). One convicting thing in that episode was a quote by Martin Luther. He said that we could preach all the Bible that we want, but if we aren’t preaching into the specific issues that are most relevant in our culture, we aren’t doing our job as pastors. I think that this can apply to those who aren’t pastors as well. We need to confront the pressing issues in society – and Marxism is at the core of many of them. So, over the next month or so, I want to explore, expose, dissect and wrestle with this subject and the inroads it has made. So that we are all on the same page, I want to give everyone a brief history of Marxism and a summary of its core arguments. I understand that some people have written much better articles on this topic than myself, but writing has always helped me learn. So here we go! The philosophy began in the 19th century with atheists Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels. They believed that the history of all societies is the history of class struggles. Classical Marxism was a socio-economic philosophy that sought to oppose capitalism in favour of communism. Marx defined class as something which existed in hostility because of the relationship between the factory owner (ie. the bourgeois) and the factory worker (ie. the politariat). He believed that those who own the means of production suppress those who don’t own the means of production and must sell their labour to survive. His philosophical solution to this supposed issue was to do away with hierarchical structures and personal ownership making everyone equal in status – even if it meant to destroy the already established system. Everywhere that his communist philosophy has been implemented has led to that country’s disaster. Classical Marxism morphed into cultural Marxism after World War 1, under the influence of Antino Gramsci and Georg Lukacs. They had thought that if a war broke out, the working class would rise against the bourgeoisie and lead a communist revolution. When this failed to happen, Gramsci theorized it was because the bourgeoisie had created cultural institutions to maintain power in capitalist societies. This is the theory of cultural hegemony or what is today called Critical Theory. He theorized what needed to happen was for these cultural intuitions (eg. Schools, judicial system, church) to be overthrown so that there would be no suppression of the masses. Lukcas believed that if the family unit and sexual morals were eroded, society could be broken down and reshaped. Other Marxist philosophers religiously took Marx’s ideas and applied them, particularly to culture. This group, referred to as the Frankfurt School, rejected absolute truth and aggressively criticized all aspects of life and society through the lens of class struggle. Many in this group were Jews. When the Nazis rose to power, they moved to New York City and were welcomed by Columbia University. From here, cultural Marxism would flourish and begin to invade American culture. Fast forward to the 21st century, and we are now living in a heavily Marxist-influenced culture. That’s a quick summary of the history, and as you may have noticed, there are some underlying arguments or philosophies.
So that’s a brief look at classical and cultural Marxism. Starting next week, we will look at specific areas that Marxism has infiltrated our country and what the Bible has to say about it.
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AuthorHello! I'm glad you found my blog. My name is David Hanson, and I am a concerned Christian who desires for the church of North America to become aware and begin to think biblically of what is happening around them in society. It's time for the church to awake and speak into the current events of the day. We alone have the truth to navigate life effectively. That truth is the Word of God. Archives
May 2022
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