September 2009 Archives
To create a secular religion within the early years of the former Soviet Union, self-serving political thugs like V.I. Lenin, commandeered the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx. It was this secular religion that paved the way for the human rights atrocities under Joseph Stalin. The term secular religion may appear as a self-contradiction, or an oxymoron in today's vernacular, but it is not and I hope to prove it in this essay.
A traditional definition of religion involves a belief in some transcendental dimension or state of beingness or perfection. Yet there are excellent reasons for calling the Communist Manifesto the catalyst of a new, modern secular religion in the former Soviet Union. Like every other world religion, it has a theory of everything and a program of action to manifest this theory into everyday reality. As a theory of everything it is comprehensive, having creeds and a dogma that touches every important aspect of the individual and their social existence. Like all religions it has certain fundamental requirements that generally define what a religion is. It has a method of inquiry (Dialectical Reasoning); a cosmic world view (Historical Materialism); and a social polity (Communism). It also includes a theory of economics, sociology, politics, and an ethical code to live by, not unlike the Roman Catholic Church, the Mormon Church and the Church of England. As a program of action, it has shown a capacity to inspire the fanatical loyalty and rigid discipline of the True Believer.
The Communist Manifesto is especially like a traditional, organized religion in the nature of certain basic questions that it attempts to answer by a process called dialectics. Dialectics is an intellectual exercise that attempts to find meaning behind so-called laws of Nature and History, as well as behind the spoken word. Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition, says of dialectics: "1. The art or practice of examining opinions or ideas logically, often by the method of question and answer, so as to determine their validity. 2. The method of logic used by Hegel and adapted by Marx to his materialist philosophy: it is based on the concept of the contradiction of opposites (thesis and antithesis) and their continual resolution (synthesis)." The Communist Manifesto includes a theory of how evil came to be (Capitalism) and how to eradicate it (Communism). It includes a vision of powers that are beyond the control of the individual. These powers inflict suffering upon the masses but also, inevitably, carry the individual and the group onward to a blessed fulfillment. It includes a prophetic foretelling of a paradisiacal Utopian State where humanity will live in perfect freedom and happiness. It is impossible to truly appreciate the deep cultic appeal of the Communist Manifest unless its powerful effects upon emotions, which are essential to any religion, are first considered.
Taken as a whole, the Communist Manifesto is a prophecy founded upon the vision of two individuals: Frederick Engels and Karl Marx. Plowing through layers of exaggeration and emotional revolutionary rhetoric, a kernal of truth can indeed be found, as is found in most political and religious systems. The Marxist system is essentially useful today because it raises questions that force the reader to re-evaluate their own beliefs or doubts on the important issues of everyday life. The extreme economic determinism of the Marxist worldview can be safely rejected today as a fanciful anachronism, but we all need to think out our own position on the possible relationships between economic development and other aspects of society, such as culture, spirituality and individual behaviors.
Reducing the Communist Manifesto and its underlying creeds and dogma to a single coherent body of thinking is not an easy task. The Marxist system is like a big tree with many branches. The trunk of this tree is Marx's core doctrine known as Historical Materialism. The same dictionary cited previously defines Historical Materialism as "the philosophy originated by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, an application of Hegel's logical method (dialectic) to philosophical materialism: the official doctrine of Communism practiced by the Soviet Union." Karl Marx first promoted this term, Historical Materialism in his 1859 book, Critique of Political Economy.
There are four essential parts to the Marxist philosophy of history. First, that the economic structure of society in the pre-communist period is not and cannot be deliberately planned and controlled, but develops independently of human will, aspiration and thought, and in accordance to objective social law. Second, that this developing economic structure determines what takes place in other areas of social life, such as class structure, the state, religion, law and ethics. Third, that the course of history is inevitably punctured by violent revolutions, each marking the transition to a more advanced stage of historical development. Fourth, those individuals shall be delivered from their slavery to one another and to historical necessity when in the fullness of time the proletarian revolution ushers in the Utopian State.
Once this fourth and final part of the historical process comes into full manifestation, it is theorized that the historical process no longer has need of the state. Individual control will become unnecessary. Marx allows for a transitional period when the ideas, interests and beliefs inherited from te old economy will still have marginal influence. He calls this grace period Socialism. During this time individuals, under communal control, will recieve their livilhood according to the standard: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. A Utopian State based on pure communism would then have arrived, achieving heaven on earth for humanity. Since force would vanish under this theoretical assumption, so would selfishness. Human beings would enter into their earthly paradise by the grace of the historical process, or Historical Materialism.
This final vision of the Utopian State is an ideal carried over from pre-Socratic times. But, unfortunately, Marx's interpretation of this pre-Socratic ideal is truly a dangerous vision. Why? To indoctrinate people with the idea that evil arises only from economic institutions is a falsehood. Individuals may be corrupted by power as well as by property; by pride as well as by genetic determination; by mental illness as well as by sociopathic personality traits. History is rife with examples of this kind of human failing that continue in the present time. To found a movement or establish a vision based upon a doctrine that chooses not to recognize these very human possibilities is an open invitation to tyranny and the totalitarian state, which Hannah Arendt spoke so eloquently about in her 1958 book, The Human Condition. She says: "Totalitarian lawfulness, defying of justice on earth, executes the law of History or of Nature without translating it into standards of right and wrong for individual behavior. It applies the law directly to mankind without bothering with the behavior of men."
A good example of how the former Soviet Union used the writings of Marx and his pseudo-scientific philosophy of Historical Materialism to brutalize its own people in the name of Communism and the Law of History, is outlined in Arthur Koestler's novel, Darkness at Noon. The novel portrays how the Communist Party turned back upon itself during the 1930's and 1940's to weed out "weak and disloyal members" who stood in the way of History and the Party. The novel is a classic study on the paranoid excesses of the former Soviet Union under the leadership of Joseph Stalin. Arthur Koestler paints a picture of the Soviet State as the inevitable by-product of Marx's psuedo-scientific theories on Nature and History. Koestler makes an excellent argument in the form of a fictional story of why Marx's central doctrine--Historical Materialism--is wrongheaded and cannot work in the everyday world of real people.
So it is easy to see why the atrocities of the former Soviet Union happened as they did. Hannah Arendt goes on to tell us in the previously cited book that totalitarianism owes its existence only to the fact that the traditional ruling interests of a country fail because of lack of nerve, by accident or through pure ineptitude. In the case of Russia the serfs were complaining loudly about their lot in life to which the Romanov family turned a deaf ear. The last two Romanov Tsars sided with family traditional and supposedly Divine Law in their inaction to address the plight of the serfs. It was just this problem of the serfs that launched Engels, Marx and Lenin onto history's stage as alleged saviors of the underclass.
Hannah Arendt continues to tell us that whenever totalitarianism rose to power, it destroyed the vestiges of the past, whether social institutions or the Church itself. When the Soviets rose to power they emptied the churches and turned them into museums; they destroyed the remaining influence of the Aristocracy; they gutted the Duma (Russia's parliament at the time) of enemies of the state; they forced revolutionary moderates, like Alexander Kerensky, into exile; they systematically destroyed all remnants of Monarchy, even to the tragic and extreme point of murdering the Tsar and his family; they shifted power from the traditional armed services to the dreaded secret police; they turned the political party system into a mass movement controlled by revolutionary guards; they established a foreign policy openly directed toward world domination. They did this all in the name of the Communist Philosophy, Historical Materialism and Dialectical Reasoning.
