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Did you know that Karl Marx shaped his seminal economic thesis Das Kapital on the contours of Dante’s dark and disturbing Inferno?
In 2020, Marx’s specter roamed the streets of America, in the form of riots and unrest across 500 cities. Lockdowns laid bare issues of race and injustice, unleashing a new version of class struggle familiar from the writings of Marx. Modern convulsions bear unmistakable marks of his influence and discontent.
In a world marked by ideological conflicts of the twentieth century, one might wonder if Dante Alighieri, the revered poet of the medieval era, would have cast Karl Marx into one of his infernal rings. Dante’s epic poem, The Divine Comedy, navigates the realms of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, to capture the essence of human virtue and vice. Would Marx, who quoted Dante’s line “Segui il tuo corso,” be condemned by the poet for the chaos he inspired?
The Legacy of Marx and Dante’s Inferno
Karl Marx (1818–1883), the philosopher, economist, and revolutionary, is often interpreted through the lens of political theory. William Clare Roberts, in his book Marx’s Inferno, suggests that Das Kapital should instead be treated as a work full of tropes, metaphors, and allusions that reflect deep intuitions. He approaches Marx’s magnum opus as a complex text that, much like Dante’s Inferno, maps out the descent of a corrupt system — capitalism — into its own demise.
To give credit where it’s due, Marx wielded a scalpel to the injustices within society, meticulously dissecting the evils of capitalism under the guise of religion. His critique was not without merit; he identified and exposed the rampant exploitation and dehumanization inherent in unchecked laissez-faire capitalism. However, his solutions lacked temper and foresight and veered toward a self-destructive utopianism.
Dante (1265–1321), known as the “father” of the Italian language, created an allegory that transformed the classical world into Christendom, reborn during the Renaissance. In The Divine Comedy, Virgil guides Dante on a journey, with Thomas Aquinas providing an architectural framework for a new universe. This was very different from Georg Hegel’s dialectics, which would later influence Marx.
Dante begins his poem with the confession of being lost: “In the middle of the journey of our life, I found myself within a dark woods where the straight way was lost.” Marx uses money (capital) as his guide. Professors and scholars often divine Marx’s intentions as rooted in noble causes such as freedom, human dignity, and equality, but his words were never designed to encourage contemplation; they were meant to incite (1). These words, etched on his gravestone, have ironically marked the graves of millions.
The Dark Side of Marx’s Influence
In the name of science, Marx — unlike Prometheus of Greek myth — envisions a secular hell devoid of faith, human aspirations, or goodwill. He unwittingly summons powers of envy and wrath to transform history into a cult of paranoid dualities: bourgeoisie versus proletariat, man versus woman, black versus white — binary thinking in the name of scientific dialectic.
Aware of the inherent flaws in our nature, Dante shared his journey not only through Hell, but also through Purgatory and, ultimately, Paradise. He acknowledged human passions and injustices, yet he forged a path of transformation. In contrast, Marx externalized blame onto “the others” (2), dismissing the individual outside the collective seeking a course of redemption (3).
Marx’s critique of societal wrongs left a void to be filled by ideologies burning through societies without providing a path for genuine progress, and as a result unleashing a deadly toxin into regimes of the twentieth century.
A century and a half later, the lie of Marx’s science is evident in the aftermath of two world wars, the Soviet experiment, and a rising China. Marx emerged as a prophet claiming that faith is an opiate. He transformed human community into a political battleground in pursuit of a utopia that never materialized. Dante warned those entering Hell, “Abandon every hope, who enter here” (4).
Though he offered a poignant critique of societal wrongs, Marx lacked insight into the soul’s journey through rebirth. His tribal struggle seems more a projection of his personal life as failed philosopher who preached an absolutist vendetta, born under the dark clouds of the nineteenth century’s Industrial Revolution that would tragically invite sociopaths like Stalin and Mao.
In Das Kapital, Marx’s adaptation of Dante’s “Segui il tuo corso” to “Vieni dietro a me” is subtle yet telling. Dante’s phrase encourages individuals to follow their own path undistracted by the mob. Marx’s version calls followers to adhere to his self-righteous ideology. This shift from Dante to Marx also traverses the journey from personal enlightenment to collective upheaval.
Personal Encounters and Scholarly Musings
Marx often wrote with a vitriolic passion against adversaries, and the National Zeitung showcased his intense disdain (5). He collected letters and affidavits to support his contentions with an almost fiendish cunning. He brimmed with extensive quotations from literary giants such as Shakespeare, Virgil, Schiller, Dante, and Byron to fortify his polemics and lay his ideological adversaries to rest.
From Germany to London, his social gatherings were filled with discussions of politics in which he would entertain his company with humor and zeal, riding donkeys and affirming his rustic skills. “After the meal they produced the Sunday papers they had bought on the road, and now began the reading and discussing of politics” (6) — a scene that paints Marx as a revolutionary envying the life of the English gentleman.
His Critique of Political Economy was later perceived by many as a monumental work. Students in communist countries pored over it as if it contained revelations about how to solve the world’s miseries. Yet Das Kapital was far from being a textbook. It was rather a slow-moving, cumbersome work resembling a heavy clogged mill wheel trying to grind capitalism to powder.
Moreover, Marx’s academic rigor often made his works dense and inaccessible, wherein he intertwined Hegel, St. Jerome, and Dante. He had a tendency to obscure rather than clarify. The reader who does not know his Dante by heart may swiftly glide over the quotation from the Paradiso, which underscores how Marx’s intellectual allusions often complicated his arguments rather than elucidated them.
One of the most harrowing criticisms of Marxist regimes comes from Richard Wurmbrand, who endured torment under communism. In Tortured for Christ, he stated, “All the biblical descriptions of hell and the pains of Dante’s Inferno are nothing in comparison with the tortures in Communist prisons” (7). He recounted the chilling joy his captors exhibited while inflicting pain, embodying the malevolence that Marx’s ideology, when taken to extremes, could engender.
Conclusion
Marx’s ideological rigidity was evident during his struggles with censorship. Anecdotes of his interactions with censors, such as the bewildered official demanding proofs from Marx late at night, illustrate his defiance and also his wit. “The proofs!” bellowed the censor. “Aren’t any!” Marx yelled down (8).
Dante’s allegorical Hell serves as a spiritual warning, whereas Marx’s ideological legacy has led to a virtual hell on earth. His misreadings of human nature stand in stark contrast to Dante’s lessons: true progress requires not just material change, but spiritual insight. As we reflect on the past, it is crucial to harmonize justice, virtue, and knowledge so as not to repeat the mistakes of history.
Dante’s final vision, “l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle” (“the love that moves the sun and the other stars”) (9), symbolizes harmony with oneself and others, a harmony of divine love, the purging of corrosive fears and passions to flourish both as a society. Marx left a legacy of alienation, conflict, and suspicion along with an unfulfilled promise of utopia.
Robert Orlando, BFA, School of Visual Arts, MTS, Th.M., Princeton Seminary, founded Nexus Media as an award-winning author, filmmaker, and entrepreneur. He specializes in film, religion, ancient and modern history, and biography. Orlando has directed documentaries such as Silence Patton, The Divine Plan, Trump’s Rosebud, and The Shroud Face to Face. His books include Apostle Paul: A Polite Bribe, The Divine Plan, Tragedy of Patton, Citizen Trump: A One Man Show, and Apostle Paul: The Final Verdict (2024). He is also working on his new book, To Hell with Karl Marx, for a 2025 film adaptation. For more, see www.marxinhell.com.
(1) “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” Robert Payne, Marx: A Biography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968), p. 65.
(2) David McLellan, Karl Marx: A Biography, 4th ed. (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), p. 136.
(3) Dante urges: “Consider well the seed that gave you birth: you were not made to live your lives as brutes, but to be followers of worth and knowledge.” Inferno XXVI, vv. 119–20. All translations are from the Digital Dante project at Columbia University accessible at https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/commento-baroliniano.
(4) Inferno III, v. 9.
(5) “All his resources of vituperation, innuendo, sarcasm, and spite were poured into a long polemical work.” Manus McGrogan, Who the Hell Is Karl Marx? And What Are His Theories All About? (Ipswich, UK: Bowden & Brazil Ltd, 2020), p. 322.
(6) McLellan, Karl Marx, p. 245.
(7) Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism’s Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration (Gastonia, NC: Tan Books, 2020), p. 34.
(8) McLellan, Karl Marx, p. 49.
(9) Paradiso XXXIII, v. 145.
