[This article is excerpted from volume 2, chapter 10 of An
Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought (1995).
An MP3 audio file of this chapter, narrated by Jeff Riggenbach,
is available for download.] The key to the intricate and massive
system of thought created by Karl Marx (1818–83) is at bottom a
simple one: Karl Marx was a communist. A seemingly banal or
trite statement set alongside Marxism's myriad of jargon-ridden
concepts in philosophy, economics, history, culture, etc. Yet
Marx's devotion to communism was his crucial point, far more
central than the dialectic, the class struggle, the theory of
surplus value, and all the rest. Communism was the goal, the
great end, the desideratum, the ultimate end that would make the
sufferings of mankind throughout history worthwhile. History is
the history of suffering, of class struggle, of the exploitation
of man by man. In the same way as the return of the Messiah, in
Christian theology, would put an end to history and establish a
new heaven and a