Forget Marx and the 19th Century, this whole crap started with Voltaire, Diderot, and D’Alembert in the 18th century. All Marx did was continue what they started. Just read up Barruel’s book:
https://archive.org/details/BarruelMemoirsIllustratingTheHistoryOfJacobinism/
Heck, just read up on Timothy Dwight’s sermon, which is essentially a summary of that bit. Horace Mann and even Jefferson, Paine, and Barlowe attempted to implement something similar into our own education system.
Thanks for the references. I'm familiar with Voltaire and the
Encyclopédistes and Barruel's book, which has been largely vindicated recently by follow-up research in French not widely available in English yet. James H. Billington's
Fire in the Minds of Men fills in some of the connections between Marx and his French predecessors via esp. the Carbonari, Philippe Buonarroti, Auguste Blanqui, and the League of the Just. I knew Jefferson and Paine interacted with some of the same movements; didn't know about Dwight and Mann and Barlowe--will look into that.