N. A. BERDYAEV (BERDIAEV)
PERSONALISM AND MARXISM
PERSONALIZM I MARKSIZM. Journal "Put’",
juil./sept. 1935, No. 48, p. 3-19.
(Appeared in English translation under title "Marxism and the Conception
of Personality"
in Journal "Christendom", dec. 1935, No. 2.
Above translation is not a reprint of this.)
I.
The relationship of Marxism to personalism, as also its relationship
to humanism, is more complicated, than is generally thought. It
is very easy to point out the anti personalist character of Marxism.
It is hostile to the principle of person, as also is every purely
sociological teaching about man, which purports to know merely the
social man, formulated as object. Likewise anti-personalist in its
understanding of man is the sociological school of Durkheim. Hostile
to the principle of person is every single-planed world-outlook,
for which the nature of man is comprised solely by its belonging
to the social plane of being, i.e. man possesses no dimension of
depth. They often contrast Proudhon to Marx, suggesting, that his
social system was more favourable to personalism, than is Marxism.
But the teaching of Proudhon also about man is indeed entirely social,
and person for him does not possess any inner dimension of depth,
i.e. inner life. True, Proudhon was a very keen critic of Communism,
as a system of the slavery of man, and his particular socio-economic
system was the more favourable for person. But he was essentially
was inclined towards a peculiar individualism hostile to Capitalism,
rather than towards personalism. The philosophic world-outlook of
Proudhon would not permit making a distinction between individualism
and personalism. Likewise to me it does not seem especially fruitful
to contrast Proudhon with Marx in the understanding of dialectics.
In Proudhon the contradiction has not been surmounted, but has been
preserved. But by this dialectic is deprived of its dynamic
character. Proudhon stands closer to Kant’s teaching about antinomies,
than to the Hegelian dialectics. But insofar as Hegel and Marx believed
in the attainment of an ultimate harmony, not permitting of contradiction,
at the third stage, at the synthesis, they certainly are subject
to criticism.
To substantiate a basis for personalism, which also possesses
its own social projection, is possible only in such instance, if
we acknowledge, that the problem of man is more primary than the
problem of society. And prior to passing on to a discussion of the
relationship of Marxism to the principle of person, it is necessary
to define, what we philosophically understand by person. It is not
appropriate to confuse the concept of person with the concept of
individual, as was frequently done by thought in the XIX and XX
Centuries. The individual is a naturalistic category, biological
and sociological, and it appertains to the natural world. The individual
is from a biological point of view part of the race, and from the
sociological point of view it is part of society. It -- is an atom,
indivisible, not having inner life, it is anonymous. The individual
does not possess any unique or independent existence apart from
race or from society. The individual as regards itself is entirely
a racial and a social being, only an element, part of a defining
correlation with the whole. Person signifies something altogether
different. Person is a spiritual and religious category. Person
speaks not only about man belonging to the natural and social order,
but also to a different dimension of being, to the spiritual world.
Person is a form of being, higher than anything natural or social.
We shall see, that it is not able to be part of anything whatsoever.
Society has a tendency to consider person as an individual subordinate
within it, as its product. From the sociological point of view,
person is part of society, and it is a very small part. Society
is the large circle, person however -- is a small circle set within
it. In a sociological setting, person is unable to oppose itself
to society and it cannot fight for itself. But from the point of
view of existential philosophy everything is turned round -- society
is a small part of person, is merely its social condition, and the
world is merely part of person. Person is the existential centre,
not society and not nature, it is the existentialised subject, and
not object. Person realises itself in social and cosmic life, but
it can do this only because that within it, it is independent from
nature and from the principle of society. Person is not definable
as a part in relation to any sort of whole. Person is an whole,
it is a totality, it is integral, it bears within itself the universal,
and it cannot be part of any sort of the general, whether of the
world or of society, or of universal being or Divinity. Person is
not at all of nature nor does it appertain, like everything natural,
to an objective natural hierarchy, nor is it able to be put into
any sort of natural order. Person is rotted in the spiritual world,
its existence presupposes a dualism of spirit and nature, freedom
and determinism, the individual and the general, the Kingdom of
God and the kingdom of Caesar. The existence of the human person
in the world bespeaks this, that the world is not self-sufficient,
that inevitably there is a transcending of the world, its completion
is not in it itself, but in God, in supra-natural being. The freedom
of the human person, is freedom not only within society and within
the civil realm, but also from society and from the civil realm,
and it is predicated by that which is over and above the world,
over and above nature and society, over and above the kingdom of
Caesar, for it is supra-natural being, it is the spiritual world,
it is God. Person is a sundering within the natural world, and it
is not explainable from it.
Person is first of all unity in multiplicity and immutability
within change. Person is not a coordination of parts, it is a primal
unity. Person mustneeds undergo change, to disclose the creativity
of the new, to grow and to be enriched. And it mustneeds remain
itself, to be the unchangeable subject of these changes. When we
meet again with our good acquaintance after a number of years during
which we have not seen him, we shall perhaps undergo to simultaneously
disturbing and painful impressions. If this man has not changed
at all, and he repeats certain things which have gone cold and stiff,
if he has not grown nor enriched himself by anything, then this
produces a painful impression. This means, that the person has not
realised himself. The realisation of person presupposes changes.
But the obverse painful impression is possible. This man has changed
so much, that it is impossible to recognise him, and then he produces
the impression of a different man. He not only has changed, but
is himself become changed. The unity of person has been destroyed
in the changes, the existential centre torn to shreds. Person is
first of all an unity of destiny. Destiny is change, amidst the
history and retention of unity of the existential centre. This is
a mystery of person. Person presupposes the trans-personal, the
higher being which it reflects, and trans-personal values, which
it realises and which comprise the wealth of its life’s content.
Person is not able to be self-sufficient, it mustneeds emerge from
itself towards other persons, towards the human and towards the
cosmic multiplicity, and towards God. Ego-centrism, being locked
up within oneself and being absorbed by oneself disintegrates the
person. Person realises itself through a constant victory over ego-centrism,
over the hardening of self. The realisation of person means the
filling-in of its universal content, for it cannot exist only by
its particularity. Person is not something completed, it forms itself,
it posits ends, like God’s idea about every single man. The realisation
of person presupposes the creative process setting off into infinitude.
Person-ness is act. M Scheler defines person, as the concrete unity
of all acts. But contrary to M Scheler, it is not life that
manifests itself as active, but rather spirit, the spiritual principle
in man, for life indeed is rather more passive. Only the creative
act can be termed act, and in act there is created the new, the
not previously existing, and non-being becomes being. Person presupposes
the creative nature of man. Creativity however presupposes freedom.
Authentic creativity is creativity from out of freedom. Creativity
is contrary to evolution, which is determinism. Only the creative
subject is person. A being that exists entirely determined by nature
and by the social process cannot be termed person, not yet having
become a person. Le Senne credibly opposes existence in the sense
of an existential philosophy of determinisation. Person defines
itself on the outside for nature and for society, but it defines
itself from within. Person is resistance to a determining from within,
a determining by society and by nature. And only that one is manifest
as person, who conquers this determining. Person is not born in
nature’s generative process and it is not formed in the social process.
The existence of person presupposes an interruptedness, it does
not permit of evolutionary uninterruptedness. Person is created
by God and in this is its highest merit, and the source of its independence
and freedom. That which is born in the generative process and formed
in the social process is merely the individual, in which person
needs to be realised. Person is resistance to determining and is
therefore anguish. The affirmation and realisation of person is
always anguish. The refusal of this anguish, the dread of anguish
is a refusal of person. The realisation of person, of its merit
and independence is a painful process, it is an heroic struggle.
Person-ness is struggle, and the refusal of the struggle is a refusal
of person. And man happens often upon this refusal. Person is contrary
to conformism, it is a non agreement with the conformism, which
nature and society utilise. Since person is an existential centre
and presupposes a susceptibility towards suffering and joy, it is
therefore erroneous to adapt person as a category for the nation
and other trans-personal communities, as the philosopher of personalism
Shtern does. The nation is individuality, but not person-ness. We
come to this, that person is a paradoxical combination of contraries:
of the personal and the trans-personal, of the finite and the infinite,
of the interrupted and the developing, of freedom and of destiny.
And the fundamental paradox of person is in this, that it mustneeds
still be created and it mustneeds already be, so that there be possible
the creative creating of person. One, who mustneeds himself create,
mustneeds already be. Person is not determined by society, but it
is social, it can realise the fullness of its life only in community
with other persons. The social projection of personalism presupposes
a radical, a revolutionary transvaluation of social values, i.e.
the transfer of the centre of gravity from the values of society,
the state, the nation, the collective, the social group, to the
valuation of person, of every person. The social projection of personalism
is a revolutionary repudiation of the capitalistic regime, of the
utmost anti-personalist, the utmost death-bearing for person, as
ever existed in history. The socialisation of the economy, which
affirms the right to work and a guarantee of a worthwhile existence
for each human life not permitting the exploitation of man by man,
is a demand of personalism. The sole system, therefore, corresponding
to the eternal truth of personalism, is a system of personalist
socialism. At the basis of a social world-concept of personalism
lies not the idea of equality nor the idea of justice, but rather
the dignity of every human person, which should receive the possibility
to realise itself.
After these necessary definitions of person we shall look
at how Marxism stands in relation to it.
II.
The attitude of Marxism towards person is antagonistic. This
is connected with the vagueness of the anthropology of Marxism.
The anti-personalism of Marx -- is a consequence of the anti-personalism
of Hegel. Hegel acknowledged the sovereignty of the general over
the individual. The person for Hegel does not possess self-sufficient
significance, it is merely a function of the world spirit. Kierkegaard
revolted against the subordination of the human person to the world
spirit, i.e. to the general. And such was the meaning of Dostoevsky’s
revolt. The talented creativity of Ibsen is saturated by these
motifs. The anti-personalism of Hegel was inherited also by L. Feuerbach.
The humanism of Feuerbach was through the generative, and not the
personalistic. Man realises himself in the collective life
of the genus and ultimately he is dissolved in it. Feuerbach broke
through towards an existential philosophy, he attempted to discover
the "thou", and not only the object. But the Hegelianism that
flipped over into materialism prevented Feuerbach from revealing
person, as an authentic and primary existence. Marx follows upon
Hegel and Feuerbach, and he recognises the primacy of the generic
being of man over his personal being. With Marx it is possible to
discover the realism of concept of the medieval Scholastics. The
general, the generic, precedes the partialised, the individualised,
and defines it. Society, and class, is more primary a reality than
is man, than is person. Class is a reality situated in being, and
not in thought. The class is not, but the human person is an abstraction
of thought. Class is what then is sort of an universalia ante rem.
It is class, and not man, that thinks and effects judgement and
holds value. Man as person, and not as generic being, is not capable
of independent thought and judgement. Man is a socio-generic being,
a function of society. Already predisposed by this is the totalitarianism
of the Communist society and state. In this totalitarianism is in
opposition to man himself, and not to society and state. Only the
human person can reflect in itself the integral and universal being,
and society and state are always partialised and cannot contain
the universalised.
Since Marxism is interested exclusively in the general and
is not interested in the individual, the weakest side of Marxism
then appears to be its psychology. If Marx himself not be considered,
and from whom it is possible to find interesting psychological remarks,
then the psychological excursions of Marxists usually is exhausted
by invective. Even the psychology of classes is not entirely worked
out. The bourgeois type is altogether not investigated, but is represented
as being malevolent, blood-thirsty, preparing for an imperialistic
war. The weakness of psychology of the Marxists is particularly
discomforting, if compared with the works of Zombart, de Man, M.
Weber, Zimmel and others. It is impossible to be concerned by psychology
amidst an exclusive interest for the general and the generic, alongside
the interest for the struggle. Instead of psychology they give moral
judgement and sentence. And this is a defect of all the Marxist
teaching about man. Although in Marx himself there is a prophetic
element and he found himself in conflict with the society surrounding
him, yet this teaching about man which emerged from him, negates
the prophetic principle, which always signifies the elevation of
the human person over the social collective, and conflict with it
in the name of the realisation of truth, to which an inner voice
summons, is the voice of God. A complete realisation of Marxism
in human society mustneeds lead to the annihilation of the prophetic
principle, not only in the religious sphere, but likewise in the
sphere of philosophy, art and social life. The annihilation of propheticism
results in a legacy of ultimate conformism of person in relation
to society, of complete adaptability, excluding the possibility
of conflict. This is a very negative side of Marxism, and it results
from its anti-personalist spirit. Marx himself was a person, standing
in opposition to the world, yet the Marxists cannot be likewise.
An example of the death of the prophetic spirit was already demonstrated
by the socialisation of Christianity in history. But anti-personalism
is only one side of Marxism, its other side.
The sources of the Marxist critique of Capitalism -- are
personalist and humanist. Marx revolted first of all against the
Capitalist regime, because that in it the human person is crushed,
is transformed into a thing. In Capitalist society occurs that,
which Marx called Verdinglichung, the making a thing of man. He
saw justly the dehumanisation, the inhumanity in this society. Both
the proletariat and the capitalists are dehumanised. The working
man, deprived of the implements of production, is compelled to dispose
of his labour, as though it were merchandise. By this he is transformed
into a thing needful for production. There occurs for man an alienation
from his work activity, it is thrust out into the world as though
objective things, it is projected to the outside. The results of
the work activity of man, of alienation from the total existence
of man, are made by external force, by the oppressing and enslaving
of man. In essence, the gap between mental and physical labour is
still a splintering of the whole of human nature and ought to be
surmounted. But this problem was put to us more by L. Tolstoy and
N. Fedorov, than by Marx. The thoughts of Marx in any case, particularly
of the young Marx about alienation and being made into a thing,
ought to be recognised as marks of genius. Herein lies the initial
motif of his denunciation of Capitalism and of his antagonism towards
the Capitalist order. This motif is purely human. Marx declares
a revolutionary revolt against the social order, in which occurs
the fragmentation of the integral human person, in which part of
it is separated, alienated and transferred into the world of things.
The proletariat is also a man, for whom part of his being is alienated
and transferred into the world of things, into the economy oppressing
it. The teaching of Marx about Verdinglichung, about dehumanisation,
was particularly developed by a very intelligent and interesting,
and quite independent among Communist writers, Lukacs. Marx
emphasises, that if socialists attribute an enormous universal historical
role to the proletariat, this is not because they worship him as
a divinity, but rather, because that the proletariat represents
an abstraction of everything human, and since his human nature is
alienated from it, he also compels himself to return himself to
the fullness of human-ness. And it is especially one, who
is deprived of the fullness of human-ness, that ought to achieve
this fullness. This is dialectic thought. For Marx, for the original
Marxism it was a very important thought, that a deprivation occurs,
an alienation of man from human nature occurs, and in its most acute
form this occurs for the proletariat. Hence result the illusions
of consciousness. Man undertakes personal activity for an objective
worlds of things, subject to inexorable laws.
In the early Marx is to be sensed the very strong influence
of Feuerbach. What Feuerbach says about religion, Marx extended
into all the other areas. In religion Feuerbach saw alienation of
the proper nature of man. Man created God in his own image and likeness.
Belonging to his unique nature presents for man a reality situated
outside of him and over him. The poor man has a rich God, i.e. all
the riches of man are alienated from him and bestown to God. Faith
in God as it were proletarises man. When man becomes rich, God becomes
impoverished and vanishes altogether. To return back to man his
riches, he then becomes a totalitarian being, and no part of his
nature can any longer be alienated. Marx placed this idea of Feuerbach
at the foundation of his talented critique of Capitalism and political
economy. And for Capitalism this is indisputably more applicable,
than for faith in God. The teaching about the fetishism of goods
in Tom I of "Kapital" is perhaps the most remarkable discovery of
Marx. The fetishism of goods in Capitalist society is also an illusion
of consciousness, in the power of which the products of human work
activity are represented by things, by the objective world, in force
by inalterable laws crushing man. Marx navigated this economic world
of things, in which the bourgeios political economy revealed its
laws. The economy is not a world of things, it is not an objective
reality of some sort, it is but the activity of man, the labour
of man, the relationship of man to man. And since the economy can
be changed, man can take control of the economy. The riches, created
by man, and alienated from him in a world of things by an objective
economy, can be returned to him. Man can become rich, a totalitarian
being, everything can be returned to him, that had been taken away
from him. And this will be accomplished by the activity of the proletariat,
i.e. of those people, from which the most wealth would be alienated.
Everything is but the product of human activity, of human struggle.
Economic fate does not exist, we shall conquer it. From the illusion
of consciousness, caused by the false objectivisation of human activity,
it can be set free. And this is the task of the proletariat. Marx
defined capital not as a real thing, but as a social relationship
of people to the process of production. This definition was very
shocking to bourgeois economists. By this definition the centre
of gravity of economic life was transferred to human activity and
struggle. In the "Theses of Feuerbach" by Marx is a remarkable place
in which he says, that the chief error of the materialists up until
then was in this, that they viewed reality under the form of object,
and not as human activity, not subjectively. Nothing could
be more anti-materialistic. This place merely witnesses, how controversial
the materialism of Marx is. That which Marx says here is far more
appropriate for existential philosophy, than for materialism. For
materialism everything is object, a thing, whereas for existential
philosophy everything is subject, activity. In Marx, just as in
Feuerbach, there were elements of existential philosophy. The early
Marx obtained his understanding of the exclusive activity of man,
as spirit, and not as thing, from German idealism. But the idea
of person was lacking in him.
Economic materialism itself can be understood twofold. First
of all, this teaching produces the impression of a consequent and
extreme social determinism. The economy determines the whole of
human life, not only the structure of society, but also the ideology,
all the spiritual culture, and there exists an invariable regularity
of the social process. It was in such a spirit of extreme determinism
that both the Marxists and the critics of Marxism understood Marxism.
But this is merely one of the interpretations, one of the sides
of Marxism, and another understanding is possible. That the economy
should define the whole of human life, this is the evil of past
times, the slavery of man. The day will come, when this servile
dependence on the economy will cease, and the economy will depend
on man, man will become its master. Marxism announced at the same
time both about the slavery of man and about the possibility of
the victory of man. Economic determinism itself by its sufficiently
sad theory is not capable to summon up a revolutionary enthusiasm.
But to an high degree Marxism possesses the capacity to proclaim
the revolutionary will. Young Soviet philosophy moves in a direction
of an indeterminist understanding of Marxism. Marx still lived
in a Capitalist society and he saw, that economics wholly determines
human life, economics enslaves the consciousness of man and evokes
an illusion of consciousness. But Russian Communists live in an
era of the proletarians revolution and the world discloses itself
to them from another angle. Marx and Engels spoke about a leap from
the kingdom of necessity into a kingdom of freedom. The Russian
Communists sense themselves the accomplishers of this leap, they
already are in the kingdom of freedom. Therefore for them Marxism
is inverted, though they at all costs want to continue to be Marxists.
Already it is not economic being that determines consciousness,
but consciousness, the revolutionary, proletarian consciousness
that determines economic being; the economy does not determine politics,
but rather politics determines the economy. Therefore in philosophising
the Russian Communists want to construct a philosophy, based on
the idea of self-actualisation. Into matter is transferred all the
qualities of spirit -- freedom, activity, reason, etc. Such a sort
of philosophy is demonstrated as corresponding to the revolutionary
will. Mechanistic materialism is condemned, it does not correspond
to the exaltation of the revolutionary will, it is not a philosophy
of the heroic struggle of man. Man is demonstrated to be free from
rule by things, from the objective, from the determinative-regulated
world, yet not as an individual, but rather as collective man. The
individual is not free in relation to the human collective, to the
Communist society, and he attains freedom only in identifying himself
with collectivised being. This was so already not only with Marx,
but also with Engels, for whom man is authentically realised only
in commonality, in generic being. Communism is exceptionally dynamic,
it affirms an unheard of activism of man. But this is not an activism
of the human person, this is an activism of society, an activism
of the collective. Individual man is completely passive in regard
to the collective, to the Communist society, it discovers active
strength only by its dissolution into generic being. Communism affirms
the activism only of human generic being. This was contained in
Feuerbach, and this emerged in Hegel, for the Hegelian world spirit.
Marxism can be interpreted humanistically, and it is possible
to see in it the struggle against the alienation from man of his
human nature, for the restoring of a totalised existence to him.
Marxism can be interpreted on the side of indeterminism , to view
in him a declaration of the liberation of man from the force of
the economy, from the dominion of fate over human life. Marxism
exalts the human will, it wants to create a new man. But in it is
also a fanatic side, deeply debasing of man. The Marxist doctrine
about man is situated in a complete dependence on Capitalist industry,
on the factory. The new Communist man is prepared in the factory,
he is a manufactured product. The psychical soul structure of the
new man depends on the conditions of life in the factory, on big
industry. The dialectic of Marxism is connected with this. Good
is begotten from evil, which becomes all the more powerful; light
is ignited from darkness, which becomes all the more sombre. The
conditions of life of Capitalist industry embitters the proletariat,
dehumanises him, alienates his human nature from him, and makes
his existence possessed by ressentiment, spite, hatred, revenge.
Proletarianisation is dehumanisation, a robbery of the human nature.
Least of all in this are the proletariat guilty. But how to await
this progressive dehumanisation, this robbery of human nature, this
terrible constriction of consciousness of the appearance of the
new type of man? Marxism awaits a miraculous dialectical transition
of that, which it reckons as evil, into good, into a better life.
But fate weighs upon the proletariat all the same, the fate of Capitalist
industry, of being exploited, oppressed, the alienation from the
worker of all his human nature. The highest type of man would be
the result of full alienation of all the human nature, complete
dehumanisation. Suchlike a concept is completely anti-personalised,
it does not acknowledge the self worth of the human person, the
depth of its being. Man for suchlike a concept is a function of
the world social process, a function of the "general", and the faculty,
which would manufacture the new man, is "the cunning of reason"
(Hegel). A quantity of evil transfers into a quantity of good. The
activity of person, its consciousness, its conscience, its creativity,
here do not apply. The cunning reason does everything, which is
in "general". Lukacs recognises the debasing influence of Capitalism
on the class consciousness of workers and he warns about this, he
proposes to struggle against this. This all speaks but about
the complexity and the conflicting condition of Marxism. Marxism
gave expression not only to the struggle against the oppression
of man by man, against injustice and slavery, but also reflected
with the materialist spirit the repression obtaining from Capitalist
bourgeois societies, the spiritual decay of these societies.
III.
Neither classical Marxism nor Russian Communism remark on
a point here, nor did Feuerbach note it either. The critique of
Marxism humanism is connected with this. An alienation of human
nature occurs. According to Feuerbach and Marx, faith in God and
in the spiritual world is nothing other, than the alienation of
the higher nature of man, and the transfer of it into the transcendental
sphere. Human nature in its totality ought to be restored to man.
But how is this restoration to man of the fullness of his nature
to occur. In materialistic Marxism this restoration does not happen.
The spiritual nature is not restored to man, it perishes together
with the destruction of the transcendental sphere. Man remains robbed,
he remains a material being, a lump of matter. But a lump of matter
cannot possess human dignity. In a material being there cannot be
realisation of the totality of life. Communism wants to return to
the proletariat the means of production alienated from him, but
it does not at all want to return the spiritual element of human
nature alienated from him, spiritual life. There therefore cannot
be talk about attainment of the totality of life, just as there
cannot be talk about the authentic dignity of man. The dignity of
man is connected with this, that he is a spiritual being, the image
and likeness of Divine being, that in him is an element independent
of the external world, and from society. The dignity of man and
the fullness of his life is connected with this, that man belongs
not only to the kingdom of Caesar, but also to the Kingdom of God.
This means, that man possesses an higher dignity and totality, a
value of life, if he is a person. The idea of person does not exist
in Marxism, just as it does not exist in Communism, and therefore
they cannot offer a defense of man. Communism at best affirms the
individual, a socialised individual, and demands for him a totality
of life, but it denies the person. The individual is merely a being,
formed by society by way of a drilled discipline. Lenin said, that
after a period of dictatorship, in which there would be no sort
of freedom, people would become accustomed to the new conditions
of social life and they would sense themselves free in the Communist
society. This preparation of people by way of a drill-discipline
and habit is contrary to the principle of person, of always presupposing
autonomy. Marx began with the struggle against dehumanisation in
Capitalist society. This dehumanisation it was necessary to oppose
by humanisation. But in actuality a complex dialectical process
transpired, in which the humanism crossed over into anti-humanism.
Marxism is one of the crises of humanism, one of the exists from
the midst of the humanistic kingdom, which attempted to affirm man
upon himself alone, i.e. it acknowledged his existing as self sufficient,
sufficient unto itself. In materialistic Communism the process of
dehumanisation continues, which Marx denounced in Capitalist society.
Communist industrialism can likewise dehumanise man, just like Capitalist
industrialism, it can transform him into a technical function. Man
is not examined as free spirit, i.e. not as person, but as a function
of the social process, as a material existent, pre-occupied exclusively
with the economic and technical, and during the hours of leisure
being entertained by art, summoned forth to embellish the industrialised
life. The anti personalism of Communism is connected not with its
economic system, but with its spirit, with its denial of spirit.
This mustneeds be kept sight of all the time. Personalisation indeed
requires a socialisation of economy, but it does not allow of the
socialisation of the spiritual life, which would signify the alienation
of the spiritual life from man, i.e. the deadening of spirit.
The anti-personalism of Marxism is moreover connected with
a false attitude towards time. Marxism and especially its practical
application in Communism looks upon the relationship between present
and future, as upon a relationship of means and end. The present
time is a means, in it an immediate end does not exist. And they
permit of means having no sort of semblance with the end -- coercion
and tyranny for the realisation of freedom, hatred and contention
for the realisation of brotherhood, etc. The totality of human life
would be realised only in the future, the perhaps remote future.
At the present time man remains robbed, from him everything is alienated,
and he himself is alienated from himself. And while Marxist Communism
affirms man and the totality of man in the future, at the present
time it negates man. Man at present is merely a means for the man
of the future, the present generation merely a means for the future
generation. Such an attitude towards time is incompatible with the
principle of person, with the recognition of the self-worth of every
human person and its right to realisation of the fullness of its
life, with its self-consciousness, as an end and not as a part,
as an end and not as a means. Regardless of what sort of man or
to whatever sort of class he might belong, it is impossible for
him to be converted into simply a means, or to consider him exclusively
as an obstacle. This is a problem of anthropology, and not sociology,
though in Marxism there is however not yet an anthropology.
There are two problems -- the problem of man and the problem
of society, and the primacy, ultimately, ought to appertain to the
problem of man. But Marxism affirms the primacy of the problem of
society over the problem of man. Marx was a remarkable sociologist
and made large contributions in this area. But he was not at all
an anthropologist, his anthropology was to the extreme simplistic
and out-dated, it was connected with a rationalistic materialism
and naturalistic evolutionism. Man is the product of nature and
society, more concretely -- he is the product of social class, and
there is no sort of independent inner core in man. Anthropology
is entirely subordinated to sociology, is merely an aspect of sociology.
Man is considered as the image and likeness of society, while society
also is that higher being, which he reflects. To this is opposed
an anthropology, based not on sociology, but on theology (I here
use this word not in the scholarly sense). Man is not the image
and likeness of society, but rather the image and likeness of God.
Therefore in man there is a spiritual principle independent of society,
wherein only is it possible to affirm the dignity of man, as free
spirit, active and creative. Philosophic anthropology first of all
teaches about man, as a person, and it is personalistic. Person
cannot be without the spiritual principle, which makes man independent
from the determinism of the external environment, both natural and
social. The spiritual principle is not at all opposed to the human
body, to the physical material condition of man, connecting him
with the life of all the natural world. Abstract spiritualism is
powerless to construct a teaching about the integrality of man.
The spiritual principle encompasses also the human body, and the
"material" in man, it means seizing mastery both of "soul" and "body"
and the attainment of integrality of the image of person, of utmost
qualification, the entering of all the man into another order of
being. "Body" likewise belongs to the human person and from it there
cannot be abstracted the "spiritual" in man. "Body" is already form,
signifying the victory of spirit over formless matter. The old Cartesian
dualism of "soul" and "body", "spirit" and "matter" is a completely
false philosophy, which it is possible to reckon surmountable. The
present-time dualism is a dualism of "spirit" and "nature", "freedom"
and "necessity", "person" and "thing", which has altogether a different
meaning. The "body" of man and even the "body" of the world can
come forth from the kingdom of "nature", of "necessity", of "thing",
and cross over into the kingdom of "spirit", of "freedom", of "person".
This meaning possesses the Christian teaching about the resuscitation
of the dead, a resuscitation in the flesh. The resurrected flesh
is not natural matter, subject to determination, nor is it a thing;
it is spiritual flesh, new flesh, but it is not fleshlessness, not
abstract spirit. The teaching about this resurrection is also distinct
from the teaching about the immortality of soul, in that it requires
eternal life for all the whole of man, and not for its abstracted
part, not for the soul only. This therefore is a personalist teaching.
The independence of the spiritual principle in man from the dominion
of society does not likewise mean the opposition of the "spiritual"
to the "social", i.e. the abstraction of the "spiritual" from the
"social", but it means that man ought to define society and be its
master, to realise in full his life also in society, and not the
other way around, not to be defined by society, not to be its slave,
its function. The "spiritual" comprises also the "social", the social
condition of man, and this signifies the attainment of wholeness,
integrality, totality. The end-purpose is not society, the end is
man himself, the fullness and perfection of life, while the perfective
organisation of society is itself but the means. Marxism is anti-personalist
in that it posits the end-purpose not in man who is called to eternal
life, but rather in society.
The fundamental error basic to Communist Marxism is with
this, that it believes in the possibility of coercive accomplishment
in not only of justice, but also of the brotherhood of people, in
the possibility of coercive organisation not only of society, but
also of community, of the communion of people. Socialism derives
from the word society, Communism however derives from the word communion,
the mutual uniting of people one to another. Socialism is quite
distinct from Communism not on the plane of the social-economic
organisation of society, and on this they can agree. But socialism
can be perceived exclusively as the social-economic organisation
of society therein limiting its task to this, whereas Communism
inevitably is totalitarian, it presupposes a whole world-outlook,
it wants to create a new man, a new brotherhood of people, its own
relationship to all the whole of life. Communism is not agreeable
to this, that it should be accepted in part, it demands an all-entire
acceptance, a conversion to Communism, as though to a religious
faith. The partial, extended but to the social-economic sphere,
recognition of the truth of Communism, and united with a different
world-outlook, is also socialism. By socialism it is necessary to
connote the creation of a new classless society, in which there
would be realisation of great social justice and in which there
would not be permitted the exploitation of man by man. The creation
of the new man however and the brotherhood of people is a spiritual
and religious task, it presupposes an inner regeneration of people.
Communism does not want to permit this, what actually is religion.
Therefore a Christian can be a socialist, and even, in my conviction,
ought to be a socialist. But it is difficult for him to be a Communist,
since he cannot be agreeable to acceptance of the totalitarian world-outlook
of Communism, into which enter in materialism and atheism. Christian
personalism not only ought not to oppose the creation of a classless
society, it ought to direct its creation. The class society, which
considers as but means the vast quantity of human persons and permits
the exploitation of the human person and the negation of the human
dignity of workers, is contrary to the principle of personalism.
Personalism ought to desire the socialisation of the economy, it
ought to guarantee each human person the right to work and to a
dignified human existence, it ought to secure for each the possibility
to realise the fullness of life. But the socialisation of the economy
is not able of itself to create a new man or a brotherly community
of people, it regulates the community by communication between people
on the soil of justice, but it does not create the community, the
communion between people, the brotherhood of people. A community
of people bears a personalist character, it is always a community
of persons, a matter of "I and Thou", the uniting of the I and Thou
into the We. This is unattainable by an external organisation of
society, which seizes upon only part of the condition of the human
person and does not attain to its depths. No sort of organisation
of society is able to create the totality of life. The illusion
of this totalisation obtains in a strange constriction of the life
of the person, the impoverishment of its consciousness, by the strangling
in it of the spiritual side of life. The Communist consciousness
is propped up by this illusion. Marxism creates this illusion by
a non-credible teaching about person, about the whole man. A movement,
directed towards the creation of a new classless society, one indisputably
more just, can be accompanied by a degradation of spirituality,
by a shrinking of the spiritual nature of man. But it is possible,
that the creation of a classless society, which would be accompanied
by the materialistic illusions of consciousness, would lead to a
spiritual renaissance, whereas at present it is belaboured by the
class struggle, its wicked topic of the day. When the classless
society would be created, they would then see, that materialism
and atheism, the Dukhobor-like spirit-denying in Communism belongs
to the past, to an epoch of the struggle of classes, and the new
classless man would be set afront the ultimate mystery of being,
afront the final problematics of spirit. Then also would be disclosed
in plain view the tragedy of human life, and that man longs for
eternity. Then only would there be attained a totality of the existence
of the person, and they would cease to accept the partial in place
of this totality. In a period aggravated by the social struggle,
the social system most corresponding to Christian socialism, is
a system of personalist socialism.
© 1999 by translator Fr. Stephen Janos
Permission granted for non-commercial distribution
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