How Christianity and Communism Are Alike

Had an interesting thought the other day. We've all heard much about how moderns have largely abandoned claims to absolute truth, to binding ideals, to a higher standard. It's funny to think, then, that communism at its strongest form, its purest water, actually accords with Christianity in claiming its worldview as authoritative and true. In communism, particularly historic Marxism, certain principles are presupposed: the evil of the upper class, the falsity of God, the malleability of man's nature. Communism, like Christianity, presents a thought-scheme containing certain ideas it considers infallible and absolute, binding and unquestioned. How strange that two systems so opposed in their actual doctrine stand on the same side--the absolutist side--imploring the other side--the relativist side emphasizing the absence of truth in the world--to believe its teachings?

Since Marxism caught on in the early twentieth century, the years have worn on, and seen many belief systems once holding to the idea of absolute truth abandon such thinking. Few thought-systems exist that still cling to any semblance of an absolutist framework. Eastern Islam, Western Christianity, South American Marxism--I'm sure there are others one could think of, but the list dwindles. How different from pre-Enlightenment days, when most everyone accepted the idea that certain principles bound all people to their ethical standard.