This seven-part series explores how totalitarianism was implemented in Cuba, dismantling democratic institutions under the promise of social justice. Through its early stages, we examine the mechanisms of control and repression that solidified power. The goal: to warn the United States about far-left ideologies.

Comparing Christian and socialist ethics in light of their most influential decalogues is revealing.

Exodus recounts how God gave Moses on Mount Sinai two tablets containing 10 commandments — the basis of Jewish and Christian moral law. The first three deal with our relationship with God; the others, with social relationships or with one’s neighbor. They unite, let’s say, the spiritual and intimate with the behavioral and public.

First: Love God above all things. Second: Do not take His name in vain — through blasphemy, cursing, or oaths, but with respect. Third: Keep the Sabbath day holy.

This initial triad develops social cohesion and communication in large human groups, and humility in leadership, as it recognizes the existence of a supreme being in wisdom.

All of them form an axiomatic basis for discussions and actions appropriate to communal life.

The “social” commandments begin with honoring our mother and father, who are called to uphold faith and tradition, educate the young, and bear witness to past battles and the power of God.

The next commandment is not to kill. The next calls for not committing impure acts, essentially on the sexual level and outside the institution of marriage, from which the family and new individuals are born, in need of emotional and economic stability for their healthy development.

The seventh and tenth are related to respect for private property, condemning theft and coveting another’s property. The eighth demands not lying or bearing false witness; the truth is a pillar of communion, the development of bonds of social trust, and a reliable system of justice.

The ninth, concerning the control of impure thoughts and desires or lust, addresses the destructive power of the inordinate pursuit of pleasure and its appetite.

Millenniums later, “The Communist Manifesto” (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels offered 10 essential points for the advance of totalitarianism. In the prologue to the 1890 German edition, Engels called it “the most widespread and international document of all socialist literature.”

But what was socialism? Vladimir Ilyich Lenin referred to it as a preliminary phase to communist society, a transitional stage for changing the mode of production, implementing “despotic control over property” (theft), and concentrating it in the hands of the state.

To achieve such a transformation, Marx and Engels outlined 10 recommendations to be implemented:

1. Expropriation of real property and application of ground rent to public expenditures.
2. Heavy progressive taxation.
3. Abolition of the right of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the fortunes of emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the state through a national bank with state capital and a monopoly regime.
6. Nationalization of transportation.
7. Multiplication of national factories and means of production, land clearing, and improvement according to a collective plan.
8. Proclamation of the general duty to work; creation of industrial armies, especially in the countryside.
9. Coordination of agricultural and industrial operations; a tendency to gradually erase the differences between the countryside and the city.
10. Free public education for all children. Prohibition of child labor in factories in its current form. Combined system of education with material production, etc.

Each of these measures (perhaps with the exception of the third) was imposed in the first decades of the Cuban Revolution and/or remains in place, leaving behind the society that is foundering today.

The decalogues of the Manifesto and the Ten Commandments are naturally and irremediably antagonistic. The first, as materialist, favors a focus on the behavioral and public levels. Meanwhile, in practice, socialist systems crush the spiritual and intimate level, violating religious and conscience freedom (which Marx and Engels denigrated).

If the first three Commandments demand loyalty to God, the first four of the Manifesto call for stealing from anyone who owns property, works, inherits, and thinks outside the leftist ideological framework.

This clashes with the biblical commandments not to take or covet what belongs to others.

The final point of the Manifesto would limit the parental right to choose their children’s education and hand it over to the State, hindering the transmission of tradition and “honor” to parents.

The commandment “Thou shalt not kill” is contradicted by the Manifesto, which maintains that the Left would only achieve its goals by “overthrowing the entire existing social order by force” and that, once achieved, power would gradually strip the bourgeoisie (read, every property owner) of all capital, of all instruments of production, centralizing them in the hands of the State.

Marx and Engels insisted that the organized proletariat would govern, but in practice, no example has been different from a bureaucratic caste and, in cases like Castro’s, families with absolute power. As children, the Cuban socialist school system repeatedly taught that the highest phase of capitalism was imperialism, and that of socialism, communism; but in truth, the highest phase of socialism is always the worst of monarchies, the absolute one.

These are just a few aspects that reveal the antithetical nature of two decalogues: one that looks to the kingdom of this world and another that looks to the kingdom of heaven; one that aspires to today and another to eternity; one that ponders matter and another that weighs hearts.

In general, the Manifesto oozes hatred toward the free market, conservatism, and tradition. “The communist revolution comes to break in the most radical way with the traditional property regime; it is therefore not surprising that it is forced, in its development, to break in the most radical way with traditional ideas,” Marx predicted.

The logic behind it was that a material change would generate a mental change. “You don’t have to be a genius to see that, as the conditions of life, social relations, and the social existence of man change, so do his ideas, opinions, concepts, and consciousness,” said Marx.

The red lynx suffered from myopia. The firmness and, even more so, the advance of faith in Russia, Cuba, China, etc., prove that the transcendence of God surpasses the onanistic arrogance of a group of intellectuals.

It is worth noting that, contrary to what the media or leftist leaders have said, Jesus was not a socialist. Nor did he suggest concentrating power in elites who would redistribute wealth or centralize and plan the economy. He did speak, yes, of looking to the needy from a place of personal responsibility through conscience. Expressions of this voluntary step? Almsgiving, donation, charity.

If the Christian worldview values piety, the principle of voluntariness reveals it as a genuine act, born from a heart sensitive and obedient to the teachings of Jesus. What moral merit is there in handing over resources to a bureaucrat who, in the name of the poor, puts the revolver of the law to your head? The powerful brotherhood among members of the early church did not emerge from there.

Its members shared goods and food, ate together, sold property, distributed money according to individual needs, and met daily in the temple. They did so influenced by the testimony of the apostles and, perhaps, united by the religious-cultural pressure of the context.

Socialists believe they see collectivism there, when in truth it is community. Collectivism, imposed by a state, is contrary to community, fostered by individual will.

John the Baptist urged the crowd to serve those most in need, but he spoke of surplus, of sharing what, in the first instance, we can secure for ourselves. He who owned two tunics invited him to give one to the one who didn’t have one; and he asked him who had food to do the same. Once again, self-will, guided by an idea of love for one’s neighbor, would take the final step.

Economic prosperity, even if minimal, is a requirement for giving resources to others. Other types of intangible resources can be given — time, for example; but in the specific case of a consumer good, we could not give our only tunic. We would only be transferring poverty.

Churches are also dangerous for totalitarianism because they are permeated by a worldview of communal generosity, as opposed to communal organization. The church’s combination of ethics and financial autonomy strengthens the social fabric. To destroy it, there must be state dependence in order to supplant that charitable function. Therefore, totalitarianism must impoverish the giver in the name of equality and justice.

Read part two