Karl Marx was born at Trier on 5 May 1818, the child of Jewish parents with a long rabbinical tradition on both sides. His grandfathers were rabbis; his father, a well-to-do lawyer, changed his first name from Herschel to Heinrich and adopted Protestantism, which in Prussia was a necessary condition of professional and cultural emancipation.
In this sense Marxism performs the function of a religion, and its efficacy is of a religious character. But it is a caricature and a bogus form of religion, since it presents its temporal eschatology as a scientific system, which religious mythologies do not purport to be.
Marxism has been the greatest fantasy of our century. It was a dream offering the prospect of a society of perfect unity, in which all human aspirations would be fulfilled and all values reconciled.
The social conditions that nourished and made use of this ideology can still revive; perhaps - who knows? - the virus is dormant, waiting for the next opportunity. Dreams about the perfect society belong to the enduring stock of civilization.
Marxism was a philosophical or semi-philosophical doctrine and a political ideology which was used by the communist state as the main source of legitimacy and the obligatory faith.
A certain degree of blindness as to the absoluteness of one's own values may be indispensable to extract the valuable qualities from the world, the qualities whose value is believed to be the highest. It is possible that in order to realize one's values one must have faith in their exclusive character.
While the positivists were proclaiming the end "once and for all" of unverifiable metaphysical systems and speculative philosophy in general, new doctrines in flagrant contradiction to those ideals have sprung up one after the other. Positivists see no more in this development than evidence of human stupidity, not any reflection on themselves.
Carnap made a detailed analysis of Heidegger's statement, "Nothing nihilates," in order to show that it is purely verbal, devoid of empirical meaning. (Incidentally, this is the only sentence from existentialist philosophy the majority of contemporary positivists appear familiar with.)
Pragmatism starts from assumptions similar to those of empiriocriticism, but differs from the latter by its striking formulations, loose aphorisms, and analytical unscrupulousness.
