A Red Flag Rises, Part VIII: Collectivism

The aspect of collectivism is also crucial to communism, but Marx's thought requires a more nuanced understanding than it is often given.

 In Marx's dialectical reading of history, he saw a sort of primeval, or pre-historic collectivism which had helped the human species to survive in its infancy. This could be described as the thesis. Then comes the historical period of individuality, or the antithesis. While Marx does not approve of this state, he views it as a period of growth in human history. In Marx's futuristic view of the perfect, classless society, the synthesis is a state of perfect individuality expressed in a perfectly collective environment.

Thus Marx must not be understood as seeking to destroy individuality, but rather he sees it as a stumbling block to human development if it be promoted outside the collective.

Nonetheless, the collectivism of communism has done more than almost any other philosophy to crush individuality and destroy the dignity of the human spirit. Marx's ideal of individuality, flourishing in the environment of collectivism, has an Achilles' heel; and, like the heel of Achilles, it proves fatal.

We must always bear in mind that Communist philosophy has an eschatalogical aspect, one which requires as much faith as Christian eschatology.  While Christianity sees a hopeful future in which each individual's personality will be perfected, yet in the harmony of perfect brotherhood, free from sin and the necessity of law; Christianity always keeps in mind the reality of original sin and the necessity of Divine assistance. While the non-Christian may view the believer's hope as an illusion, the Church's understanding of the human condition is clearly rooted in reality. The Communist hope, the assumption that broken humanity can and will achieve this utopian estate without Divine assistance, is truly illusory, and nothing more than wishful thinking at best.

This two-fold flaw in Marx's dream, the denial of original sin and the denial of God, turns collectivism into a nightmare of inhuman abuse. Mankind will not naturally attain to such a state, and instead of achieving it through the inward conversion of grace, is forced to try to achieve it through the power of the socialist state. Communism is not concerned with converting hearts, but with changing society by force. The future utopia in which the individual finds freedom vanishes like the mirage it is, and is replaced by the present grim reality of the utter subjugation of the individual to the state, the abolition of free will, and the utter destruction of the dignity of the human person.

There is no other way for the Communist state. It has no channels of grace with which to change fallen humanity, it has no God upon which to call for aid in its efforts to change society. Without these helps, confronted with the harsh reality of sin and evil, with the human penchant for greed, selfishness, corruption, and violence, the Communist state always resorts to power and violence (both physical and psychological), in its efforts to create its illusory paradise on earth.

The common good is something which all of us must consider, for no man is an island, as John Donne reminds us, and we all have a certain duty towards our fellow men. In Communism, however, the common good becomes an idol, a harsh and evil pagan idol, to which the individual must mercilessly be sacrificed. The Christian recognizes in his brothers and sisters the Divine Image, the mark of brotherhood springing from common Fatherhood, and considers each individual as more precious than all the universe. Communism, having no God, sees no Divine Image, no inherent, eternal value in the individual. Its materialism robs man of his spirit, his individuality, and his destiny. The collectivism of Communism, shrouded under the language of the common good, swallows up each member of which it is composed, and consigns them to the materialistic oblivion of its atheistic humanism.

For all the rosy hopes of Marx, Communism remains a religion with no heaven, an iron law with no purpose, crushing its people in the wine press of its totalitarian collectivism, bringing forth no wine, but only streams of blood.