“Returning to Marx’s preoccupation with Prometheus, it is interesting to recall that the mythic figure’s name shares the same meaning with the term “Lucifer,” as translated by St. Jerome from the original Hebrew Helel (“Lucifer”). Marx’s possible flirtation with Satanism is an often overlooked, yet controversial topic. It is not this researcher’s contention that Marx was a Satanist in the traditional sense. In all likelihood, Marx probably denied the existence of Satan as a literal metaphysical entity. Yet, it is important to remember that the Luciferian conception of Satan is premised upon the same existential contention. From Marx’s neo-Gnostic vantage point, Lucifer or Prometheus was probably rendered immanent by the cognitive powers of man. Ultimately, whether or not Marx was a Satanist is irrelevant. Essentially, one needn’t accept the existence of Satan if one accepts the principles embodied by the Fallen One. In his poem “Human Pride,” Marx expressed the Luciferian aspiration to achieve apotheosis:
With disdain I will throw my gauntlet full in the face of the world, And see the collapse of this pygmy giant whose fall will not stifle my ardor. Then will I wander godlike and victorious through the ruins of the world And, giving my words an active force, I will feel equal to the Creator. (“Human Pride”; emphasis added)
Ironically, Promethean revolutionaries, whose Weltanschauung was heavily informed by Marxism, murdered millions of the very species that they sought to apotheosize. Marx’s words, when given “active force,” apotheosized the State. The State, in turn, subordinated the individual to the collective. The individual could no longer lay claim to any intrinsic value. Instead, meaning and purpose were only found in the group. Thus, Marxism actually devalued humanity. Again, it is extremely ironic that such devaluation stemmed from an anthropocentric belief system. Yet, such contradictions proliferated the Weltanschauung of the Promethean radicals and still persist in the minds of the modern purveyors of socialism. Chesterton enumerates the various internal contradictions of the revolutionary Weltanschauung:
“All denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind and the modern skeptic doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. Thus he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then writes another book, a novel in which he insults it himself. As a politician he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then as a philosopher that all of life is a waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a lie and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie.
The man of this school goes first to a political meeting where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts. Then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes to a scientific meeting where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is forever engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt becomes practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything. “(41)
Thus, when the modern revolutionary tangibly enacts his Utopian vision, it automatically qualifies as a dystopian nightmare for others. Promises of unlimited freedom begin to fade as the apotheosized State confiscates the citizenry’s wealth in the name of socioeconomic egalitarianism and imprisons dissidents. In the name of facilitating evolution, a theory that the orthodoxy of science has deemed infallible, those members of the human species who fail to meet the arbitrarily established standards of biological and genetic purity are expunged through eugenical regimentation. Fanatical as they are in their scientism, modern revolutionaries view man himself as a quantifiable entity. The irreducible complexity of humanity is overlooked as man is gradually transformed into a paint-by-numbers schematic. Society, by extension, is also considered a quantifiable entity. Thus, modern revolutionaries work to install their own bowdlerized form of democracy: the democracy of “experts.” By virtue of their own purported scientific and technical expertise, these policy professionals calculate and systematize the motivations of the populace and develop economic and technological stimuli that can produce the desired patterns of mass behavior.
The final and most tragic casualty of this form of governance is not the political dissident or the marginalized “dysgenic.” Ultimately, the final victim of scientific totalitarianism is the human soul. Man, from the scientistic vantage point, is little more than amalgam of behavioral repertoires. He is a tabula rasa whose value depends entirely upon the final portrait rendered by the brush strokes of his “enlightened” conditioners. If he cannot or does not conform to the paint-by-numbers template of the “experts,” he is deemed a product of retrograde evolution. Because man’s soul defies quantification, the content of his character is appropriated absolutely no currency in the scientistic Weltanschauung. Again, it is indeed ironic that, in their hopes of apotheosizing the human species, modern revolutionaries devalue man. This is the Faustian face of modern science: the inhuman human race.”
Cucumber Lodge 