Dr. Paul Kengor is a professor of political science at Grove City College (Pennsylvania) and the author of several best-selling books, including Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century; God and Ronald Reagan; God and George W. Bush; God and Hillary Clinton; and The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism.
Dr. Kengor is widely recognized for his scholarly work about the American presidency, the Cold War, and the history of communism.
His most recent book is Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage (WND Books, 2015), a deeply researched historical study of how radical leftists, for close to two centuries, have worked to undermine and fundamentally change—or even destroy—marriage, family life, and traditional social structures and relationships.
Carl E. Olson, editor of Catholic World Report, recently corresponded with Dr. Kengor about Takedown.
CWR: Toward the end of your book, in writing about the socialist support in Cuba of “gay marriage,” you note, “As long as the traditional family is reversed, Marxism is advanced.”
That’s a fairly succinct summary of your book, isn’t it? Why was Karl Marx so opposed to the traditional family and marriage? What shaped and informed his ideological disdain for both?
Dr. Paul Kengor: There are a lot of factors that go into answering that question, but two stand out: First, Karl Marx showed personal disdain for the institution of marriage. He was unfaithful to his wife and, all around, a poor husband.
I don’t mean that to sound judgmental or uncharitable. Sure, those of us who are husbands are all lacking, myself included, but Marx was a bad case.
You can read the details in the book, but, among other things, Marx had a sexual relationship with the longtime family nursemaid, who he apparently impregnated, though he always insisted the child was neither his nor his responsibility.
We also can’t neglect Marx’s partner in The Communist Manifesto, Friedrich Engels, who joined him in writing of the “abolition of the family” and held married life in even lower contempt. Marx showed his opposition to monogamous marriage by breaking his vow to his wife, but Engels showed his disregard by simply refusing to marry the many mistresses that wanted him to make honest women out of them. Marx and Engels sniffed that “bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common.” Continue reading
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