Martin Amis wrote, “The chief demerit of the Marxist program was its point-by-point defiance of human nature”. Yuri Slezkine creates a solid argument that Marxism was a change of faith and that it was a cult, filled with dogmas that defied logic and human history.  Could a parallel be drawn between Marxism and the early Church?  Both were fueled by dogmas, their gospel was spread by zealous “preachers” who devoted their lives to their new religion; they both had martyrs, a hierarchy of disciples and believed that they were able to create a new and better world.  Marxism went one step further in that it’s view of human nature was entirely against the course of history, but their dogma answered “history” in that the nature of man had been corrupted by all societies throughout history.  Thus, while claiming to be founded on “science”, the dogma of Marxism discounted all known evidence.  With that dogma, they unlike the Church, claimed that they were able to create a “new man”, freed from the chains of the past, of the “artificial” realities of the world, able to create a world filled with happy, satisfied, productive individuals.

Of course, no one believed that true Marxism could be achieved overnight, and so there had to be a period of the dictatorship of the proletariat.  During that time, priests, aristocrats, kulaks, capitalist, the majority of academics and others needed to be purged. The bourgeois institution of marriage was also to be amended so that women would not be oppressed.  The failure of the Soviet experiment of easy divorce quickly created a problem so the need for the family was recognized (at least until the children could be raised almost entirely by the State).  And, this helped to eventually be a major problem for the longevity of Communism, for parental influence could not be entirely countered.