According to Osho, communism lacks 'Zen fire and Zen wind'—the inner, meditative spirituality found in Buddhism, Taoism, and Zen. Marx reacted to Judaism and Christianity and, unaware of Eastern non-theistic wisdom, built a purely materialist ideology. Without inner transformation and meditation, social equality becomes mechanical, coercive, and loveless; integrating consciousness would humanize communism and align outer justice with inner freedom.
Communism fixes outer problems but forgot the inner awakening—heart, meditation, and consciousness.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
One of the sannyasins has asked a question: WHAT IS MISSING IN COMMUNISM?
If you really want celibate people, then they need a brain operation. The center of sex should be removed. But then you will be simply impotent -- not celibate. Karl Marx was right, that such religions should be finished. They are against humanity. They protect poverty and they protect the rich. They are against revolution, they are against any change -- obviously, he was right to call them the opium of the people, the hope of the hopeless. If Christianity and Judaism were the only religions, then the Soviet Union would not have any need, any urge to find the inner world! But just think about it. You cannot have the outside world without having the inside world; they exist together like two sides of the coin. And there are scientific methods available. Zen is the most scientific method to inquire into your consciousness. It takes you beyond mind into…
Question: OSHO, WHY ARE YOU AGAINST COMMUNISM? He said, "Remember one thing: this is a poor man's hut, not a king's palace. In a king's palace there is no space. Although the palace is big there is no space because the heart is not there. Here space is very limited, but the heart is unlimited." The Red Indians are the owners of this land, but they have been put into reservations and forests. Those are prisons without walls -- and very subtle prisons because the prisoners are paid money. They gamble, they fight, they drink, and they kill each other. They are very rowdy people because what else can they do? And money goes on being poured on them: more children, more money. So they go on producing more children and getting more money and getting more drunk. It is really a crime.
According to you, nobody is able to impart the truth. Is what you say not true then?
What I am telling you is only an indication and should not be regarded as true in itself. Truth is far removed from indication. It is not the indicator you have to see, but where it directs you. While you are looking in that direction what you will perceive is the truth. There is no way to speak that truth. No sooner has it been uttered than it becomes false. The truth can never be expressed; however, it can become one's experience.
Question: BELOVED OSHO, ARE YOU IN FAVOR OF COMMUNISM? This man never even for a single moment meditated. He knew nothing of the inner; he was just concerned with books. What he has written in Das Kapital... no communist reads it. I have met hundreds of communists; no communist reads it. Every communist keeps it in his house, just as a Christian keeps The Bible. It is the bible of communism -- and they have created the trinity exactly: Marx, Engels, Lenin; and the bible is Das Kapital -- but nobody reads it. I have gone through it, from the first page to the last. It is all words, no experience; quotations from other books, but no authentic experience, not a single experience of his own. What kind of man is Karl Marx? Jews give a strange type of people to the world.