A Red FLag Rises, Part V: Relativism

We therefore reject every attempt to impose on us any moral dogma whatsoever as eternal, ultimate and forever immutable ethical law on the pretext that the moral world, too, has its permanent principles which stand above history and the differences between nations. ~Friedrich Engels~ 

Today we will look at the second philosophical seed of Communism, and that is relativism.

Relativism can be considered as one of the great curses of modern thought. It adversely affects both reason and morals. It is, at root, the denial of the absolute. Relativism is not confined to realm of philosophy and the atmosphere of universities. It has (as philosophies in universities are wont to do) trickled down and become a commonplace with the common man. On any given day one is quite likely to hear among his or her neighbors, families, friends, or co-workers, the opinion that truth is individualistic, that there is no absolute, that whatever one believes is all that really matters, and a host of other ideas and phrases all exhibiting the philosophy of relativism. The commonness of this phenomenon has taken relativism from the realm of being an occasional scholarly disease to being an intellectual plague of epidemic proportions.

Their are several different forms of relativism, but we are concerned principally with two for the present: moral relativism, and historical relativism.

Communism is woven from top to bottom with moral and historical relativism, and it is not hard to find their source. The name of this source is Georg Hegel, the German philosopher with whom we have become increasingly familiar in these posts. Ironically, Hegel's philosophy shows strong absolutist tendencies, though his dialectic is fundamentally relativistic. It is, in fact, precisely upon this inconsistency that many scholars have criticized Hegel's work. Hegel's dialectic is rather automatically relativistic. Unlike Socratic dialectic, in which either the thesis or antithesis must be wrong, an idea clearly rooted in traditional absolutism, Hegelian dialectic leads to the creation of the synthesis, something new and different. This synthesis will have its own antithesis, and so forth, thus leading to a structure in which there is no right or wrong answer, but only helical change. It is worth noting here, for purposes of visualization, that the philosophies of Fichte, Hegel, etc., were neither cyclical nor linear, but helical. The visual of a helix clearly represents the idea of relativism--a progressive spiral of change with no absolute points.

Given, even hypothetically, infinite sources of energy and an infinite number of opposing forces, this dialectic should continue is course infinitely without ever arriving at an absolute conclusion. It is here, however, that Hegel reveals his absolutist side, by arriving at a clear stopping point, a final synthesis. Hegel believed that the process of historical dialectic would lead at last to a moment when man achieves, in pure spirit or mind, the god-like perfection of  perfect knowledge. Hegel considers no antithesis to this final synthesis. Thus his dialectic ends with an absolute. Again, Hegel has been criticized several times by later philosophers upon this very contradiction. Yet the same problem may be seen in both Feuerbach and Marx as well, and I think that we would find that many people who hold to the idea of relativism have certain absolutist goals, hopes, or ideals as well.

Marx certainly hoped for a perfect classless society in the future, itself an absolutist ideal. Like Hegel, he seems to have ended his dialectic with a final absolute. However, the rest of his view of history is very relativistic, and his moral viewpoint is defined by relativism as well.

In Marx's dialectical reading of history man cannot be said to be man; through his revolutions and dialectical struggles man is becoming man. The novelty of the synthesis makes relation to an absolute impossible. A thing is said to be improving as it approaches the perfection of its species. The perfection of thing is an absolute. Powerful is in relation to the perfection of absolute power. Prettier is in relation to the perfection of absolute beauty. And so forth. In the historical relativism of Hegelian dialectic, however, change is so radical that it bears no relation to an absolute. A person, thing, or idea does not become better (i.e. nearer to the perfection of its species), it becomes something altogether different-- a synthesis of opposing forces. Man, to Marx, is not becoming better, while remaining intrinsically human, but is radically changing, simply becoming. The god-like future man of Hegel is not merely a better man than you and I, it is a radically different man. Imagine for a moment a dialectical struggle between good and evil. The result of this struggle is not the victory of either good or evil, but rather the creation of something new, with which we have hitherto had no acquaintance. This new synthesis will also have its struggle with a new antithesis, and so on. Good and evil can no longer be understood in even hypothetically absolute terms, but merely as passing evolutionary rungs on a dialectical step ladder. Viewing history through this dialectical lens we are allowed no permanence, no absolutes; we are left only with change. History devoid of absolutes becomes relativistic.

It is no great leap from here to understand that everything absolute in our concepts also suffers from the helical pattern of Hegelian dialectic. Moral relativism is only an obvious consequence of these doctrines, and one that we shall examine more closely in a related post in the future.

A Red Flag Rises, Part IV: Atheism

Criticism of religion is the beginning of all criticism. ~Karl Marx~

Prometheus is the first saint and martyr on the calendar of philosopy. ~Karl Marx~

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. ~Karl Marx~

Now that we have looked a little at the philosophies that inspired and defined Marxist Socialism, let us return to the second post in this series, in which I listed seven principles that underlie the philosophy of Communism. In the next seven posts I would like to briefly examine these principles, and offer some salient quotes from Marx, Feuerbach, and later Communist leaders, to demonstrate the use and evolution of these principles within Communist history.

Today we will begin with the first point, which is atheism.

Atheism is certainly not new. In the sense of practical atheism (living as though God does not exist), it has cleary been around since Fall of our first parents. There is no historical record that can give us a date for the first appearance of intellectual atheism, the actual belief that God does not exist. However, there are certainly enough records of individual atheists to indicate that there have been atheists here and there throughout much of known history. At no point prior to modern times, however, did atheism define a culture, or achieve any real political or social prominence. Atheists were typically isolated individuals, and their beliefs do not seem to have been in keeping with the beliefs of the majority of their fellow countrymen. It is possible, of course, as some modern atheists would have us believe, that there were many more atheists who were afraid to voice their opinions, and those few who did so were lonely heroes. There is certainly no real evidence for such an idea, and even if the number of atheists of earlier times was far higher than we might imagine, the very idea that they kept their beliefs to themselves out of fear or social sensitivities would still seem to indicate that they were very much the minority. One thing is perfectly clear, however. Never, in all the long annals of history, until modern times, do we ever encounter an atheistic government, country, or society. Atheism was always the exception, never the rule.

Beginning with the Enlightenment (that infamous misnomer!) atheism appears on a larger scale, exhibiting great numbers and commanding more political power. Even this, however, was largely confined originally to France, and could be seen as more anticlerical than anti-theistic.

It is in Communist ideology, and in the Communist countries that we first really find an attempt to create an entirely atheistic government, country, and people. The atheism of this Communism stems directly from Communism's German roots, and it is worth while spending a few short paragraphs to examine its distinctive features.

It has already been noted in the previous posts in this series, that Hegel and Feuerbach represent two of the greatest philosophical influences on Marx and his thought. Hegel was an Idealist who promoted the idea of dialectically evolving Spirit. The evolution of this spirit would eventually culminate in a god-like perfection. Hegel, as mentioned in the first post, worded his beliefs carefully to hide his atheism, allowing his readers to fall into the trap of assuming that he really still did believe in some kind of Deity. He did this presumably to remain hire-able as a professor in a still nominally Christian Germany. It seems quite clear now, however, that he was really an atheist, merely making man into god through a sort of dialectical apotheosis.

Feuerbach split with Hegel's Idealism, preferring a stark materialism. His atheism was clearer, and he was hailed by his peers as having destroyed the notion of God. Like his master, he also apotheosized man, but only in the sense of humanity, not individual persons. He believed that humanity as a collective whole, dialectically advancing through history, would eventually repudiate the idea of God, and accept is own personal greatness, realizing that the attributes wrongly ascribed to God throughout history were really the glorious attributes of humanity itself.

Like Feuerbach, Marx was a devout materialist, who also believed that humanity contained its own greatness, the greatness for so long mistakenly attributed to God.

There are many forms of atheism, but Marxist atheism has a few particular qualities that are worth understanding.  From what we have seen of Hegel, Feuerbach, and Marx, we may observe four crucial aspects to Marxist atheism.

1. It is anti-theistic. Atheism takes many forms, and throughout history there have been many polite and well-mannered atheists who had come to a personal belief that God did not exist. They were not God-haters or God-destroyers. Often there beliefs remained personal, and they were quite willing to accept the religious convictions of their fellowmen. Feuerbach and Marx bear no resemblance to such personalities, and would best be described, not as atheistic, but as anti-theistic. Since they held that the attributes commonly ascribed to God were actually the attributes of mankind itself, they believed that faith in God robbed man of his own greatness. Belief in a deity crippled man, making him a servant to an imaginary tyrant. Thus faith was not an amoral issue, rather faith in God represented to these men an actual evil. Man must take back what had been robbed from him; must repudiate God and accept his own "divinity"; must leave the illusion of heaven and conquer earth; must renounce his own slavery and become master of the world.

2. It is evangelistic. It follows from what has been said above that Marxist atheism must take on an evangelical, almost messianic character. It is essential to it, for the liberation of mankind, that the very notion of God be removed from the minds of men, obliterated from the records of our memories. Thus is creates its own "gospel", the good new of materialistic humanism, and sends out its missionaries to convert the world. It becomes almost a religion in its own right, filled with evangelical zeal, striving to utterly destroy the last vestige of God in the minds of all men. It will not be satisfied until it has accomplished that very goal.

3. It apotheosizes humanity. This has already been mentioned above, but it should be noticed that Hegel, Feuerbach, and Marx all share the idea of man-as-god. Feuerbach and Marx are particularly clear in noting that every goodness ascribed to God is really a projection of man himself, who in the alienation of his unhappy conscience seeks to create a perfect being outside himself and untainted by his own failures. To both these men, however, mankind really contains all the goodness and greatness of God within itself. Communism thus divinizes mankind, placing the image of man as the idol of worship in its humanist temple.

4. Its apotheosis is collectivist. Feuerbach, in breaking with Hegel's Idealism, also broke from the individualistic tendencies of Hegel. Marx, however was also critical of the vagueness of Feuerbach's abstract humanity, and sought a more concrete, historical understanding of man. It is important to understand Marx's thought here correctly, which due to its complexity will be reserved for another post. Marx was, in a certain sense of the word, both an individualist and a collectivist. Nonetheless, Marx believed that the perfection of man-as-god was not to be looked for in individuals, but rather in Communist society as a whole. In other words, the true freedom and perfection of the individual can only occur within the collectivist society of Marxist Socialism. Thus the collectivist aspect of Communism is present in the philosophies that inspire it, and its subjugation of the individual to the state is merely the political outworking of its philosophical root.

In his doctoral thesis Karl Marx glorifies the character of Prometheus from Greek mythology, who stole fire from Zeus and gave it man to use. For this deed Prometheus was condemned to everlasting torment in Hades, chained to a rock. Marx admires Prometheus because he rebelled against the gods, stole their greatness and gave it man, made man godlike, and preferred to torture to serving Zeus.

Thus we can describe the atheism of Marxist thought as collective, universal struggle, forging ahead with evangelical fervor, to eventually rid all the world of religion and the idea of God, thus enabling man, the new Prometheus, to take back by revolt his own great gifts and goodness which were stolen from him by the gods; until, at last, he sets up a humanistic, materialistic paradise of man in Communist society that will cover one end of the earth to the other.

Such is the picture of Marxist atheism, and it is at the very heart and soul of Communism.

A Red Flag Rises Part III: Karl Marx and Man as an Economic Factor

In these previous two posts we have looked at the philosophical roots of Marxist Socialism as found in Hegelian Dialectic, and the Dialectical Materialism of Feuerbach. At the end of the last post I listed seven key aspects of these philosophies which directly influenced Communism, and each one of which will be discussed in its own future post. However, we must first examine the "finishing touches" placed on Hegelian/Feuerbachian thought by Marx himself.

Karl Marx did not merely imitate or assent to the ideas of those who went before him, nor did he borrow from them carte blanche. While Hegel and Feuerbach were his inspiration, he did not agree with them at every point, and had several crucially important ideas of his own, which fashioned their thought into the "scientific socialism" of the next generation. In the words of Fr. Vincent Miceli, S. J., in his magnificent work The Gods of Atheism, "Karl Marx received the keys to his Communist kingdom from his German masters, Hegel and Feuerbach. Hegel gave him the keys of the unhappy conscience and the dialectical method of analyzing history....Ludwig Feuerbach, with the publication of his The Essence of Christianity, supplied Marx with the key of a humanist, materialistic humanism....A genius in his own right, Marx minted a few keys to his own kingdom."

Without entering the hallowed grounds of the philosophers, whose fine points and language I will not profess to understand, I believe that we may use a few straightforward adjectives to help understand the fundamentally Marxian aspect of Communist thought, and they are concrete, political, economic.

Like Feuerbach, Marx was highly critical of the Idealism of Hegel, yet he felt the materialistic humanism of Feuerbach was also too vague and abstract. Much of Marx's thought centers on striving to turn from the abstract to the concrete. He sought to understand man and human history in concrete terms, viewing the history of our species as purely political and economic, a great dialectical struggle of oppressor and oppressed, master and slave, bourgeois and proletariat, one class pitted against another.

To Marx's atheistic, materialistic mind man has no future but this earth, no purpose but work, no goal but to work for utopia here on earth. The worker is not just a man towards whom Marx had sympathy, rather to him the worker is man. Within this perspective, the economic aspect of Communism takes on a larger and deeper meaning.

Make no mistake about it, Marx was not merely some sympathetic social justice advocate. He was seeking for paradise on earth. Man as a worker, in community (for Marx was a collectivist, man has no real value as an individual), having finished the dialectical struggle of the ages through revolution, will live and work on this earth in a classless utopia. This is the vision of Communism. It was not meant to be confined to a country or a time. It was meant to free all mankind through its revolution from bourgeois oppression, from the confines of individualism and petty nationalism, from the illusion of the idea of god and the futile hope of an after life, from the divisions of class, from any moral absolutism except its own. It was evangelical, inspired with an almost messianic zeal, and it was meant to cover all the earth with its society. Man, through his struggles, was seeking "becoming", and could only be or become in the perfect society of worldwide Communism.

It may be objected here, in light of comments in the earlier two posts, that Marxism is really an economic idea after all, since its political and economic aspect is tied with Marx's whole view of humanity, and is central to his philosophy. I have written before that Marxism cannot be understood as a merely economic principle apart from its underlying philosophies. But, it may be asked, is it not clear now that Marxism is precisely economic?

It would, perhaps, be better to view Marxist Socialism as a weapon. Its spearhead is its political and economic aspect, its concrete point in which it enters and pierces modern history. Its material shaft is Feuerbach. Its energy, or driving force, is the dialectic of Hegel.

Marxism is economic-focused, yes. But its economic and political ideas cannot be understood apart from its philosophies, and indeed could not have existed apart from them. Thus, the economic aspect of Communism arises from its root philosophies, not they from it. Sans atheism, Feuerbachian materialistic humanism is not possible, and the idea of an earthly paradise is made less likely. Sans dialectic, the Marxian view of history disappears. Sans collectivism, the subjugation of the individual to the state becomes unthinkable. Sans evolutionary thinking, the certainty of earthly utopia vanishes. And this list can go on.

Regardless of what some may think, Communism cannot really be separated from atheism, materialism, moral relativism, etc. Once again, let me state: Communism cannot be understood merely as an economic idea or principle. It cannot be divorced from its roots in nineteenth century German philosophy. It cannot be separated from its underlying Hegelain/Feuerbachian principles, nor can we fully appreciate its evil or its dangers apart from its principles.

A Red Flag Rises: Part II

In the last post we considered Hegelian Dialectic and its influence upon Feuerbach, who in turn influenced the philosophy of Marx. I listed there five elements of Hegelian Dialectic which we will see reappear in Communist thought. Before going further, I would like to pause and consider two more element which came from Feuerbach, not from Hegel, and which were, in fact, part of his criticisms of his famous teacher.

Feuerbach certainly accepted much that was central to Hegelian dialectic-- indeed Hegel was his inspiration, but he came to radically differ from him on several key points. Some say that he differed from him in his atheism, but this is a matter of appearance. Hegel strove throughout his life to remain employable, so he kept his atheism closely guarded, wording his books and papers in such a way that he could readily be imagined to believe in some form of god. Certainly Feuerbach, an outspoken atheist, was at odds with the seeming Deism of Hegel. All this was appearance, however, as most evidence indicates almost incontrovertibly that Hegel was a complete atheist. Nonetheless, Feuerbach did make clear that he considered the idea of god something which must be eradicated in order to free mankind from its slavery to a chimera, and this "evangelical atheism" was essential to his philosophy and worldview. In this he does seem to have differed with his master.

It should also be noted that Feuerbach, in critiquing Hegel's Idealism, agreed with Strauss that the "Idea" could not be confined to an individual, such as Christ, as Hegel had proposed in his thought that Christianity was the ultimate religion. Thus Feuerbach's break with Hegel sets the stage for a collectivist humanism, in which the idea of god/perfection is to be found in collective humanity, and turns away from the individualism inherent in Hegel's idealism.

A second aspect of Feuerbach's critique of Idealism is the fact that Feuerbach's philosophy is materialistic. He no longer viewed the universe as something involving spirit or idea, but rather as something purely material. Thus we are able to expand upon the five points listed in the first post, and list what I consider to be the seven seeds from which the evil of Marxist Socialism arose. They are:

1. Atheism
2. Relativism
3. Blind belief in social evolution
4. An intrinsic tendency towards revolution
5. Collectivism
6. Materialism
7. The justification of any means in light of the end.

Next we have to consider the effect these philosophies had on Karl Marx, and whether or not he espoused them. Then each of these seven points will be examined in future posts. Until then, it is enough to note that these ideas underlie all of Communism, and that Communism cannot be explained or understood as merely an economic theory or ideal. It is far more, far deeper, and far worse than that.

Until next time.

A Red Flag Rises

In all the long history of the human race, I doubt that a more inherently evil political and social system than Communism has ever been created by the mind of man, if indeed it was created by the mind of man, and not by something rather more diabolic. It seems strange to me that so many people today consider Communism to be something of the past, and also assume that the great evils which it has perpetrated upon millions are merely corruptions of its original design, accidental to its benign and purely economic intentions.

To these two great errors I reply with the following two facts:

1. Communism is still very much at large in the world, both under its own name, and in other guises.
2. The seed from which Communism sprang was rotten to the center from the beginning.

I will attempt to support these statements presently, and in doing so I shall also attempt to demonstrate why I consider knowledge of Communism as something still pertinent to our own times and circumstances.

Let us begin with that seed from which Communism grew. It is not enough to start with The Communist Manifesto, or Das Kapital. The economic ideas of Marx, Engels, and their contemporaries are not the true root of Communist ideology. If we view Communism purely as an economic theory we will utterly miss its real character and intention. Marx was influential, and he had his own influences as well, and his personal philosophical ideas were fairly mature before Proudhon suggested at a dinner party that he apply them to economics. In other words, the economic side of Communism is merely the aspect of  human experience to which Marx applied his philosophical theories, and we can never truly understand Communism until we understand those theories. So let us review a little history and philosophy.

We start our review with a journey back in time to the very early nineteenth century, to Germany and to a philosopher by the name of Georg Hegel. Like so many other philosophers who spend their lives dealing in esoteric thoughts and complicated polysyllabic words, Hegel actually had an immense impact on the everyday thoughts and lives of everyday people. There are a variety of aspects to Hegel's thought but we will focus only upon one great cornerstone of it which has become deeply entrenched in modern thought, and that is the concept of Hegelian Dialectic. To offer a quick and simple explanation of Hegelian Dialectic, we may use the three terms thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. In Hegel's thought every thesis (word, idea, force, action, etc.) will find itself opposed by its opposite, or antithesis. The ensuing struggle between these two ideas results, not in the traditional concepts of victory and defeat, but rather in the creation of something new and different-- a synthesis. Each synthesis is evolutionary, an improvement upon what had preceded it. Applied to thought and understanding the dialectic process should eventually leads humanity to a god-like state, when man realizes that he is actually god.

Five aspects of Hegelian Dialectic should be noted here, as they will continue to be important.

1. It is always revolutionary. Antithesis, opposition, antagonism, or revolt against the existing order is always essential to advancement.

2. It is evolutionary. It assumes that the synthesis is an improvement upon the thesis and antithesis, an expanding of horizons, a deepening of knowledge. It is unclear to me where this process ever ends, for the final perfect synthesis should also have its antithesis, but it is quite clear that it leads to a disparagement of past thought.

3. It is relativistic. Absolute truth either does not exist in such a Hegelian construct, or else is presently unknowable to humans, since every certainty which we hold will be opposed by its antithesis, both of which will prove to be untrue or imperfect in light of the synthesis. It breaks with the traditional current of Western thought which has been in place since the Greek philosophers, expressed in the logical dictum "If one of two opposites be infinite, the other must be entirely destroyed".

4. It destroys all traditional concepts of God and origins, and tends toward either atheism or some form of human or natural apotheosis.

5. It subjugates the means to the end. Both thesis and antithesis are to some degree inconsequential in light the synthesis, and the inherent relativism of the structure.

So much for Hegel. The philosopher's greatest student was another German, a young man named Ludwig Feuerbach. His ideas did not precisely mesh with those of his teacher (Feuerbach was an outspoken atheist and a materialist, while Hegel was not a materialist, and was a covert atheist), but must be noted that all of his thought was rooted in Hegel's system of dialectic. Like Hegel, Feuerbach understood history in terms of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, but all viewed through a purely atheistic and materialistic lens.  Feuerbach believed that man, seeing in himself both good and evil, objectifies and apotheosizes the good, giving to it the name of god-- that something perfect towards which we aspire in our imperfections. Taking this good and placing it outside himself, man robs himself of his own potential. He writes, "Man...objectifies his being and then again makes himself an object to the objectivized image of himself thus converted into a subject...." (The Essence of Christianity 1841). However, to Feuerbach this objectification of our being is not only an error, but an evil. By attributing our own attributes to an imaginary god, we remain forever subjects to that imaginary god, incapable of taking back what is ours, and advancing towards a perfection of humanity. Thus atheism was not optional to the mind of Feuerbach, rather it was essential. Feuerbach was not a private atheist, but rather an evangelist of atheism, teaching that the notion of God must be destroyed in order to free mankind from its self-imposed slavery. In addition to the five points listed above concerning Hegelian Dialectic, we may add from Feuerbach's thought this aggressive ant-theism, this need to utterly destroy the very notion of god from the human consciousness in order to liberate mankind for greatness.

Feuerbach's influence as the leader of the Left Hegelians was immense, and his influence was strongly felt by none others than Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marx, in fact wrote his doctoral thesis on Feuerbach, and though it was a criticism, Marx remained firmly entrenched in Hegelian Dialectic, and the atheistic materialism of Feuerbach. We must not underestimate this influence. It is here that we must look to truly understand Communism. Communism is a social, political, and economic system, yes. But it is first and foremost a worldview rooted in atheism, materialism, and Hegelian Dialectic. How this is so and what it means will be examined in ensuing posts.