Marx and Nostradamus

From the very depths of the West of Europe,
A young child will be born of poor people,
He who by his tongue will seduce a great troop:
His fame will increase towards the realm of the East.

It speaks of him seducing a great troop and posits how his fame will increase toward the realm of the East. There is little question that communism took root and grew in the east, first in the Soviet Union and later in Eastern Europe and China. Nostradamus refers to this as a seduction. He obviously saw the rise of Marxism this way because it deluded millions into believing that communism could provide a better way of life.

Yet, in fact, it destroys freedom by taking away the individual's possession of his own labor. Nostradamus makes this more clear in the next quatrain (number 36) when he says, "He will be found to have his hands eaten". The whole quatrain reads:

Buried apoplectic not dead,
He will be found to have his hands eaten:
When the city will condemn the heretic,
He who it seemed to them had changed their laws.

"Buried apoplectic" projects the demise of the Soviet State and communist China's ultimate rejection of Marxism. Yet Nostradamus says it is not dead because he knows that in spite of the myriad failed social experiments, it still survives among power-hungry demagogues who would use it to augment their own position.

The last two lines project the future yet to come - the ultimate rejection of Marx who wished to impose a system on mankind that could never work because it left out the laws of human nature and required the imposition of utopian ideals by force.