Tag: Christianity

Continuing our theme of exploring the relationship between religion and socialism, Peter Claassen argues that the influence of Christian Mysticism on Hegel impacted the thought of Karl Marx.

One of the most misunderstood parts of Marxism is its relationship and debt to Christianity. Much has been said about Marx and Hegel’s relationship, what it means for the dialectic to be mystifying, his relationship to Hegel’s understanding of history, and so forth. However, worse than this is the sheer lack of discussion around Marx, utopian socialism, and Christianity. While some have commented upon Marxism as a form of millenarian Christianity, including members of the far-right like Mircea Eliade, there has been little discussion within the far-left, save for a few like Ernst Bloch and Roland Boer. In this essay, we will go through the ways in which Marx through Hegel and others owes a significant debt to various forms of Christian mysticism, and the ways in which his work parallels those works. Specifically, we will look at his early works like the Paris Manuscripts and the critique of Hegel’s Political Philosophy, where we find these ideas very clearly expressed, as well as in Engels’ later work on Utopian Socialism. This will be coupled with an explanation of why Marx thinks that Hegel is a mystic, and what that means for his demystification of the dialectic. What we will discover is that Marx has a deep and ongoing debt to mystical currents in Christianity, as mediated both by Hegel and by the utopian socialists, and that this seems to be understood in part by figures such as Lenin.  

We must start by asking what it means for something to be the rational kernel of something else, i.e., what does it mean for the dialectic to be the rational kernel of Hegelian mysticism? To understand this, we must come to understand what Hegel’s mysticism is, and his relationship to mysticism in general. Glenn Alexander Magee has written a brilliant exposition of what Hegel’s mysticism is, in relation to the Hermetic Tradition. To condense 200+ pages into a short space, Hegel believed in extra-sensory perception, conversed with friends over the nature of magic,¹ publicly aligned himself with German mystic reactionary Franz von Baader,² was accused by Schelling of stealing his entire philosophy from Jakob Boehme,³ a Lutheran peasant mystic,⁴ and, most outlandishly, believed in a kind of Earth Spirit.⁵ This, however, is less interesting than Magee’s exposition of Hegel’s relationship to these prior mystics, namely that Hegel’s speculative philosophy, that is to say his dialectical method, is most comparable to mythopoetic thinking, stripped of its sensuous quality,⁶ as Hegel himself argues is the failing of Boehme.⁷ Most tellingly of all however is Hegel’s belief that magic is a lower form of philosophy.⁸ What all this leads us to conclude is that Hegel understands his philosophy to be higher elevation, or more accurately articulation, of what the mystics had already grasped. If we use the language of Marx, Hegel understands that he is recovering the speculative kernel of sensuous mysticism. However, it is important here to note that Hegel’s dialectic is understood as holding up a mirror to the Absolute, God, by which he/it can comprehend itself as Hegel says “it is the exposition, and in fact the self-exposition, of the absolute and only a display of what it is.”⁹ Further, the actual motor off which Hegel’s dialectic runs is not “the grasping of opposites” or even “immanent critique” but what can only be described as the logic of supersession, with the two prior ideas being mere subsections of this. The logic of supersession is, namely, that two seeming opposites can be grasped together internal to their own movement and reveal themselves to subsist in a third, for example, Being and Nothing are in fact moments of Becoming, as coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be.¹⁰ This concept is thoroughly mystical; while Magee points out we do find it in Judaism,¹¹ the most obvious example of this is the Christian notion of how Christianity supersedes prior religions, namely Judaism and paganism. As Christ says, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.”¹² This logic itself is found in God, where God gives rise to his other, the world, but through Christ reconciles himself to the world giving rise to the Holy Spirit, which is the inner bond of love between Christ, God and the Spirit itself. As such the very core of Hegel’s system, the logic of supersession, the thing off which the whole machine runs, is thoroughly mystical in origin. 

Naturally, we must now ask what is Marx doing to Hegel, if Hegel himself is demystifying the mystics? In short, Marx understands himself as taking Hegel’s system further than Hegel himself could. The most obvious rejection would be the belief in extrasensory perception, world spirits and similar “entities”; however, even here we find a pronounced Hegelianism. Specifically, the only way “the rational kernel” can be interpreted is the concept of speculative philosophy as such. Therefore,  what Marx supersedes is the sensuous mystical elements of Hegel’s philosophy, in favor of the rational kernel, namely speculation as applied to matter. 

“My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of “the Idea,” he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of “the Idea.” With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought.”¹³

Here precisely Marx betrays his consummate Hegelianism, for as Magee points out the very term speculative philosophy, qua Hegel, is about the reflection of God back into himself, through the activity of the philosopher, hence why Hegel considers himself to be writing an autobiography of the Absolute, the Unconditioned. As Cyril Smith has correctly noted, the purpose here of Marx is not to form another theory, but to strike down all theories, and do nothing other than translate the material world into the forms of personal thought.¹⁴

It should however be noted that within Hegel scholarship there exists a significant debate over whether Hegel can be counted as “metaphysical”.¹⁵ This seemingly arcane debate however has serious importance for the interpretation of Marx. The key relevance here is that the opposition in Hegelianism between metaphysical and non-metaphysical Hegels is the question of if Hegel is arguing for a new super-being. Non-metaphysical Hegelians attack their opposition as positing that Hegel is arguing for wondrous new entities with bizarre properties, a demiurge. By comparison, the metaphysical Hegelians argue that what he is discussing in concepts like the Idea, or the Absolute, is reality in itself. As such his Absolute is not God as understood in popular culture, a kind of impish Superman.¹⁶ Rather the Absolute is the Unconditioned. This of course is where the description of pantheism comes from, as if God is the Unconditioned then all reality must in some sense be a manifestation of he/she/it. 

The importance of this discussion, however, comes when we realize that Engels specifically distinguishes Aristotle and ancient Greek philosophy from “metaphysics”, saying that Aristotle, “the most encyclopaedic of [the Greek philosophers]), had already analyzed the most essential forms of dialectic thought”, and that further Hegel is not a metaphysician.¹⁷ As Hegel clearly says, “In both (Philosophy and Religion) the object is Truth, in that supreme sense in which God and God only is the Truth.”¹⁸ However this God can no longer be understood as a God simply beyond us, a demiurge beyond, but rather as the unconditioned truth of reality.¹⁹ Marx strangely seems to have almost stumbled into Hegel’s position by attacking a crude metaphysical reading of Hegel, wherein the Idea is simply a demiurge, a superman. As such in opposing the Idea as demiurge he has bizarrely actually hit upon Hegel’s true position. Whether this is a mere rhetorical flourish is unclear. 

As such, I agree then with Smith that Marx is not interested in then proposing simply another ideology, rather he is proposing the dissolution of all ideology, all theory as such, and rather simply attempting to tie himself to reality as such. His “dialectical materialism” would then be more dialectical than materialist, for the very reason that the interest is in the method, which as Engels clearly indicates Aristotle more readily grasps than the metaphysicians and materialists, ala Locke. ²⁰ It is the method that Lenin clearly is drawn to, in his Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, and he again clearly understands this point of dialectics as a form of speculation, that is to say reflection of the objective social fact, sans distortion or interpretation. ²¹ However, if Marx is then maintaining the rational kernel, it must be noted that this rational kernel is still speculative philosophy, a doctrine that ultimately emerges from European mysticism. The important part here to note then is that this doctrine of the mystics, if taken up within the dialectical process, and taking Hegel further than he could take himself, would necessarily render Marx more mystical and more Hegelian than Hegel himself, in the same fashion that Hegel’s de-sensualizing of the mystics made him more mystical than the mystics. Precisely, in superseding Hegel with respect to Hegel’s mysticism, extra-sensory perception, and so forth, Marx preserves the essential core of Hegel’s mysticism, speculative philosophy, and thus is more Hegelian than Hegel, more mystical than the mystics. 

The issue for any would-be interpreter of Marx is where this leaves him in relation to God. He clearly understands the Idea/Absolute and so forth as a kind of demiurge, which they are not, and he is proclaiming his loyalty to a philosophical system which requires God, because it is nothing other than God’s self-exposition. If this system is to make sense we are forced basically to fall back to Marx’s Spinozism,²² and accept that what dialectics is reflecting back into itself is the material world as such, so in essence Marx can only be distinct from Hegel in so far as his Absolute is Spinoza’s substance, or matter as one might put it. This itself is ironically betrayed in the name “dialectical materialism”, which one might better call “speculative materialism” in contrast to Hegel’s “speculative idealism” (though this is separate from Quentin Meillassoux’s use of the same term). What dialectical materialism as a term reveals, specifically, is that this is dialectics as applied to matter, that is to say speculative philosophy applied to the material world as such, or as Marx says “the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought”. 

Having come to understand that Marx sees himself as doing to Hegel what Hegel did to prior mystics, there then comes the question of the relationship between scientific socialism and utopian socialism. Immediately we must grasp that the type of science here cannot mean a kind of natural science, as Engels says in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific: 

“The analysis of Nature into its individual parts, the grouping of the different natural processes and objects in definite classes, the study of the internal anatomy of organized bodies in their manifold forms — these were the fundamental conditions of the gigantic strides in our knowledge of Nature that have been made during the last 400 years. But this method of work has also left us as legacy the habit of observing natural objects and processes in isolation, apart from their connection with the vast whole; of observing them in repose, not in motion; as constraints, not as essentially variables; in their death, not in their life. And when this way of looking at things was transferred by Bacon and Locke from natural science to philosophy, it begot the narrow, metaphysical mode of thought peculiar to the last century.”²³

Thus the “real basis” from which we make “a science of Socialism”²⁴ cannot simply be the kind of positivist social science of the modern-day, as a system of division and breaking down. Rather, as Engels makes clear the basis is dialectics; however, having gone through Hegel, Magee, and Engels it should at this point be explicit that dialectics is the “operating system” of European mysticism, which emerges from ancient Greek philosophy. One might almost imagine it better to translate Wissenschaftlicher Sozialismus as ‘Hermetic Socialism’ to convey the necessity of this point.  The scientific method of scientific socialism is dialectics, and dialectics is nothing other than the method of the mystics. 

Having been brought now to this point, we must then ask: if the dialectical method taken from Hegel is mysticism stripped of its extraneous elements, what then is the distinction between scientific socialism and utopian socialism? Engels again provides the answer: 

“Although Hegel was — with Saint-Simon — the most encyclopaedic mind of his time, yet he was limited, first, by the necessary limited extent of his own knowledge and, second, by the limited extent and depth of the knowledge and conceptions of his age.”²⁵

“And although, upon the whole, the bourgeoisie, in their struggle with the nobility, could claim to represent at the same time the interests of the different working-classes of that period, yet in every great bourgeois movement there were independent outbursts of that class which was the forerunner, more or less developed, of the modern proletariat. For example, at the time of the German Reformation and the Peasants’ War, the Anabaptists and Thomas Müntzer; in the great English Revolution, the Levellers; in the great French Revolution, Babeuf.”²⁶

“One thing is common to all three. Not one of them appears as a representative of the interests of that proletariat which historical development had, in the meantime, produced. Like the French philosophers, they do not claim to emancipate a particular class to begin with, but all humanity at once.”²⁷ 

In short, the failure of the utopian socialists is the failure to center themselves upon the proletariat. This is of course the same failure that Marx places at the feet of Hegel. Hegel in his alienation cannot see the possibility of communism, and thus imagines the highest order as being the Prussian state.²⁸ For their part the utopian socialists fail not because of their vision, but because they do not see the means of delivering the emancipation of all of humanity, namely that this is only possible through the proletariat, and so want all of society to rise. It is important here now to note that these utopians were also explicitly mystics, and that the visions they presented of communist society were explicitly mystical. However, this is not what Engels criticizes them for, and thinks that this mysticism is a mere epiphenomenon of the failure to center themselves upon the proletariat. Further, Engels recognizes in Fourier a “masterly” use of the dialectical method.²⁹ 

Further, the mysticism of the utopians was extreme. Owen, Fourier, and Saint-Simon were all deeply mystical. All of them believed in one form of extra-sensory perception or another,³⁰ and Saint-Simon openly called for a new hierarchical and mystical Christianity, as Engels notes.³¹ Fourier famously believed that the seas would turn into lemonade, but more interestingly he has a vision of the reconciliation of man and beast, or with the emergence of species like Anti-Lions, pacifistic animals that would emerge with the development of human civilization. This vision however is not abandoned by Marx, rather as he discusses in the Paris Manuscripts, communism as such is the reconciliation of men with nature, where nature is understood to be the inorganic body of man.³² This is the core of what Fourier is proposing, the exterior mystical form of Fourier’s position, namely that animals and humans, now in conflict, would with the coming of communism be reconciled, is still contained within the notion that nature is the inorganic body of man, which in class society we are alienated from. 

However, it is necessary to elaborate on the specific connections between communism and the kind of mystical Christianity from which utopian socialism openly emerges. First, we have the mystical understanding of the New Earth and soteriology. Marx and Fourier’s visions of communism clearly parallel the vision of the New Earth, that is the earth after the second coming, as seen in  Eastern Orthodox Christianity, wherein man shall serve as the cosmic priesthood for a totally recreated world, in which a new covenant between man and beast is created and all shall be with God.³³ Fourier’s vision wherein society is reorganized into a series of pseudo-monasteries³⁴ further parallels the famous vision of Joachim de Fiore, who envisaged the world to come as a contemplative one, in which all would be monks.³⁵ This vision parallels the vision of communism as presented in the Paris Manuscripts, wherein nature is man’s inorganic body, and the coming of communism is the overcoming of alienation, man from man and man from nature: 

“Physically man lives only on these products of nature, whether they appear in the form of food, heating, clothes, a dwelling, etc. The universality of man appears in practice precisely in the universality which makes all nature his inorganic body – both inasmuch as nature is (1) his direct means of life, and (2) the material, the object, and the instrument of his life activity. Nature is man’s inorganic body – nature, that is, insofar as it is not itself human body.  Man lives on nature – means that nature is his body, with which he must remain in continuous interchange if he is not to die.  That man’s physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.”³⁶

Further Marx writes that:

“Communism  as  the  positive  transcendence  of  private  property  as  human  self-estrangement, and  therefore  as  the  real  appropriation  of  the  human  essence  by  and  for  man;  communism  therefore  as  the  complete  return  of  man  to  himself  as  a  social  (i.e.,  human)  being  –  a  return  accomplished  consciously  and  embracing  the  entire  wealth  of  previous  development.  This communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals  naturalism;  it  is  the  genuine  resolution  of  the  conflict  between  man  and  nature  and between man and man – the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution.”³⁷

This again betrays the relationship between communism and Christian eschatology, where, as we find in Eastern Orthodoxy, the coming of the New Earth is in a certain sense a return, in the same way that higher stage communism is a return to primitive communism, and so too is the New Jerusalem a return to the Garden of Eden. The difference between Man in the Garden and Man in the New Jerusalem is that the new Man will have knowledge of good and evil. The process of alienation was necessary precisely because it is through alienation Man has come to know himself.³⁸ As such the return to communism as at the same time an advance. The analogy that we find is that for Marx, alienation is functionally identical to sin, or to use the Greek hamartia, to miss the mark. However, sin should not be understood as simply a violation of God’s law; rather, sin properly understood is separation from God, which ultimately is separation from one’s own nature³⁹ as made in the image of God, and from our fellow man, through transgression of his person. This again is identical to Marx’s understanding of alienation, wherein alienated existence is not simply alienation from yourself, but alienation from your fellow man, and alienation from the world.⁴⁰ Further, the insistence upon man’s nature as socially creative labor, must be understood as an attack upon Hegel’s Lutheranism. Here Marx disagrees with the doctrine of Sola Fide, i.e. that we can come to reconcile ourselves with God through belief alone, but rather it is necessary that we must act to reconcile ourselves to God. This is almost identical to the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of theosis, that reconciliation with God must be a process of activity and purgation.⁴¹ 

What however is more telling is Marx’s remark that Communism is “the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence”. For most western Theists God is an ontologically simple being, in that He has no distinction between his existence and his essence, following from Aristotle and Aquinas.⁴² The only being in whom the strife between existence and essence is resolved is God. Marx’s position then that communism is the resolution of the distinction between existence and essence is tantamount to the belief that communism is the state of sainthood, wherein the saint has subsumed themselves into God, ceasing to exist as a self-sufficient entity in their unity with God.⁴³ It should then be clear that the only way to interpret Marx’s understanding of communism is as a demystified or stripped away account of salvation and eschatology within Christianity, as mediated by utopian socialism. Now one could argue that this is to be found in other religious traditions, which it is. However, it is unclear that Marx or Engels had much contact with those traditions, while they had extensive contact with Christianity. 

The linkage however does not cease there. The basic Augustinian thesis, that the Church is the City of God on Earth, already present in this world,⁴⁴ prior to the end of the world, is preserved in Marx. The specific attack that Marx has upon the utopians should be understood first and foremost as an Augustinian attack upon them. As Camatte correctly points out the essential characteristic of the proletariat is that it is revolutionary; what it means to be revolutionary however is participation in the Gemeinwesen, the material human community, that is organized through the Party.⁴⁵ As Marx says, “The head of this emancipation is philosophy, its heart the proletariat”.⁴⁶ So too must we understand that the issue of the utopians was their imagining of communism as a beyond, to which all society must be raised,⁴⁷ rather than the true position, namely that communism is nothing other than unalienated life as such. Communism precisely cannot be defeated because communism as such is nothing other than the inner truth of all class society. However, it is only under capitalism that communism can be achieved because it is under capitalism that class struggle, that is the struggle against alienation and oppression, is at its purest. Augustine’s attack upon the pagans was against their belief that the sack of Rome showed the failure of the Church; rather he correctly pointed out that the Church quite simply cannot be destroyed.⁴⁸ The Church as such is imperishable, and cannot be overcome or corrupted or destroyed. Thus we observe that in Marx’s attack upon the Utopians, namely in their imagining of Communism as a beyond, he charges them with failing to see the tool by which communism will be achieved, or in other words, that the path to the City of God is through the Church.⁴⁹ It is only through the triumph of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is in its core truth already communism, and as Camatte correctly reads, is also the party, that we can be delivered to communism. 

Finally, it is necessary to consider the nature, purpose, and role of the militant. The rejection of the cult of personality by Marx must be understood as nothing other than the assertion of the ultimately clerical nature of the militant. This is found consistently within the works of the great revolutionary leaders. As Trotsky says, “the Bolsheviks appear in relation to the democrats and social-democrats of all hues as did the Jesuits in relation to the peaceful ecclesiastical hierarchy”,⁵⁰ and as Marx says, “such was my aversion to the personality cult … I never allowed one of these [honors] to enter the domain of publicity”.⁵¹ The basic assertion here is nothing other than that of Saint Gregory the Great in naming himself Servus Servorum Dei, slave of the slaves of God,⁵² or when Christ asserts, “And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant”.⁵³ The essential point here is that the militant does not seek to speak for themselves. As Camatte points out, scientific socialism is not the work of an individual, but rather it is the work of the species.⁵⁴ So too are the priests properly conceived, no longer living for themselves but for the group. This is the essential characteristic of the militant, as well as the theoretician, who at the end of the day must also himself be a militant. The militant does not seek to act for themselves but for humanity as such, and it is in this way that he becomes reconciled with his nature, and ultimately with reality. By understanding that the nature that is within himself is the species-being of man, as socially creative labor, he comes to understand that to overcome alienation is submission to the species as such. However, as has been pointed out before, the goal by which the liberation of the species, that is, the ending of alienation, is achieved is through the proletariat. The proletariat in its revolutionary nature harnesses the species-being of man, and the role of the militant is to sacrifice himself for this purpose. As such the task of the militant is nothing other than the organization of the proletariat; they are in this sense nothing but a conduit through which the proletariat, and thus humanity as such, acts. In the same fashion, the priest is nothing other than the conduit by which the Holy Spirit acts. The militant is against the cult of personality precisely because the cult fails to understand the proper function of the militant, that the militant does not live for themselves but for the species and the proletariat; they have no honor in themselves apart from their function. 

This brings us finally to what Marx sees as the issue with religion. The famous quotation of the opium of the masses does us well here. The very fault with religion is the same as was identified with social democracy, that in being an easing of pain it distracts from the ultimate necessity of class struggle, from the struggle to overcome alienation. It as a vehicle is unable to achieve its ultimate end, i.e. communism, that is the end of alienation, both of man from man and man from nature. This, however, is not atheism, for as Marx himself notes, socialism is at once the overcoming of religion and atheism.⁵⁵ In the same way, Christianity understands itself as being the overcoming of both Judaism and paganism. Where the pagans insisted on the plurality of Gods, the Jews insisted upon the singularity of existence, and thus the singularity of God; Christianity understood itself as overcoming both of these and recognizing the diversity in unity that is the triune God. The same is true of socialism. Socialism stands in relation to atheism as atheism to religion and has overcome both, precisely because it recognizes that the relation is no longer man to God, as with religion, nor man to himself, as with atheism, but with man to his nature and to nature itself. Thus, even in Marx’s anti-religious moments, he reveals the ways in which he is deeply influenced by utopian socialism and its origins in Christianity. However, what further complicates the idea that Marx should simply be read as an atheist is his declaration that communism is “the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence”. As has been discussed prior this seriously threatens the idea that Marx is an atheist in the same fashion that even Feuerbach is an atheist, rather, in a Hegelian fashion, he seeks to overcome the failures of both atheism and religion. In the same way that a Christian is more Platonic than the Platonists, and more Jewish than the Jews, since Christianity has overcome both, scientific socialism is then more religious than the religious, and more atheist than the atheists. 

To conclude, I would draw attention to the examples of the Biblical prophets, and their attitude towards God. As Isaiah says “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”.⁵⁶ Here we see the basic characteristic of Marx, namely the desire not to speak for one’s self, but rather to simply become the mouthpiece by which the species, or God, speaks. Smeared with coal, Marx and Isaiah’s lips are united precisely in their collective proclamation of man’s unity with man and nature. Having gone through these sources it should be clear that what Marx is aiming to do is to correctly formulate the doctrines that religion at its most religious holds to, namely when it is aiming to overcome the alienation of man from man and man from nature. However, this must be understood within the context of Marx’s debt to Hegel and utopian socialism, for separate from this connection the very structure of Marx’s overcoming fails to make sense and loses all coherence.