I knew someone would predictably draw from the Manifesto -- this is why in my original post I talked about the 1,000's of pages of Marx's writings and "cherry-picking" quotations. Thank you for falling directly into that trap! Congratulations, you read the Manifesto in college....



Yes, the Manifesto is one of the few places you can find a violent Marx and EVERYONE points to that one short piece. In the VAST corpus of Marx's writing, it is a completely non-theoretical and insignificant piece. It is a POLITICAL piece born of the revolutions engulfing Europe at the time, not "Marxism" as in the THEORY of Marx.



OK, so let's continue to play this game! My turn: I'm going to cherry-pick from the Bible now.



(Revelations 19), Jesus: “And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war”, “His eyes were as a flame of fire”, clothed in a vesture dipped in blood“, and “out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.” (Translation: follow me, or you die)



OR:



Jesus: "But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me." — Luke 19:27



Now, I'm going to cut and paste your own words, but just replace Kymer Rouge with Catholic Church or other Christian groups and Marx with Jesus. You said, "You can’t see how the Khmer Rouge (for example) simply took Marx at his word?"



So what? All this proves is that we both can selectively cut and paste from Google searches....



The point is that the OVERARCHING MESSAGE of Jesus is not violence like this, just as the overarching message of Marx is NOT the Communist Manifesto.



Again, "Marxism....without reading Marx."