THE SCIENTIFIC WORLDVIEW IN THE DISTORTING MIRROR OF “NEO-CHRISTIANITY”

A. Moiseeva

The task of forming a scientific worldview, as was noted at the XXIV Congress of the CPSU, acquires special urgency at the present stage of historical development, which is characterized by an intensification of ideological struggle. “The struggle against right and ‘left’ revisionism, against nationalism remains as urgent as ever; attempts from various quarters to attack Marxism-Leninism as the ideological and theoretical foundation of the communist movement have manifested themselves with the greatest sharpness”¹.

In the struggle against the ideas of the scientific communist worldview, the imperialist bourgeoisie unites all reactionary forces. One of the most reactionary and common concepts of the apologists of imperialism is the concept of a “new, purified, reborn” Christianity, or “neo-Christianity,” represented by the ideas and theories of N. Berdyaev, S. Bulgakov, S. Frank, and others.

Having arisen as one of the means of struggle against the developing Marxist-Leninist worldview, “neo-Christianity” sought to impose upon the working masses a “new” worldview, the core of which was to be a modernized religion—such a religion as would turn toward the “earthly fate of humanity,” sanctify culture, and become the center of social life.

From the standpoint of this “new” religion, the “neo-Christians” strove to “expose” and discredit Marxism-Leninism. In this, the method of discrediting Marxism-Leninism was an attempt to present Marxism as a religion and then to overcome it, to refute it as a false religion. “Marxism,” wrote N. Berdyaev, “is a religion, a new religion, coming to replace Christianity”². S. Frank, in his pseudoscientific work Marxism as a Worldview, asserted that “materialism is not essentially a theoretical ontology, not a scientific doctrine about the structure of the world, but faith in certain values, the affirmation of a definite hierarchy of life values”³.

The methodological basis of their conclusions was philosophical idealism. Synthesizing idealism, irrationalism, and mysticism, N. Berdyaev,

S. Bulgakov and S. Frank came to the conclusion that there is a “religious formation” of the human soul that cannot bear emptiness in the religious respect. Materialism and atheism contradict human nature, they asserted, while interpreting any worldview as religion. “I generally think,” wrote S. Bulgakov, “that at the bottom of every worldview there is faith”⁴. Every worldview is religion, S. Frank proclaimed, true or false religion. But even false religion, in S. Frank’s opinion, such as, for example, Marxism, which affirms faith in man, contains within itself “the germ of truth,” since after all “God is one, and the partitions of our creeds do not reach to heaven.”⁵

Developing this proposition further, the “neo-Christians” arrived at the conclusion that the object of any worldview is the relation: man—God, expressed in the form of faith, faith that is true, as in Christianity, or distorted, as in Marxism. Such a posing of the question evokes objections, for the history of the development of human thought knows several types of worldview: mythological, religious, and scientific. Each of them differs according to the conditions of its formation, and also according to the way in which the world is presented to man and what man’s relation to the world is. In the classification of types of worldviews, the assertion of the “neo-Christians” may be qualified as theoretically untenable. Moreover, it proves once again that the ideologists of the ruling classes are vitally interested in disseminating views that would cultivate religion and mysticism, summon the working masses to humility, and restrain them from the struggle for liberation from social injustices.

The “neo-Christians” not only declared Marxism a false and untenable religion, but also attempted to reduce the entire content of Marxism to atheism, interpreted as a “religious heresy,” a “distorted faith,” whose principal purpose is the struggle against the Christian religion. The essence of Marxism, said S. Bulgakov, lies not in socialism, not in materialism, but in its religious-philosophical ideas.⁶ In S. Frank’s opinion, atheism is the absence of faith in “that in which one ought to believe” and the turning of one’s unused powers toward that “in which one must not believe.” Frank’s thought was, as it were, made more concrete by N. Berdyaev, who asserted that “atheism is above all the forgetting of Christ, the suffering and sacrificial God.”⁷ S. Bulgakov concurred with N. Berdyaev, explaining that “the self-affirmation of man outside God assumes the character of the conscious deification of the creature and is defined as atheism”⁸ or as secularized faith in man directed against Christianity.

Thus the “neo-Christians” distorted the essence of the Marxist worldview, seeking to emasculate from it what is chief and fundamental. For the classics of Marxism-Leninism, the struggle against religion was never an end in itself, and the task of overcoming religious survivals was a question subordinate to the main task—the struggle for the successful building of socialism and communism.

The principal content of Marxism—the revolutionary transformation of the world, the destruction of capitalism, the radical change of people’s lives, of the relation of man to man—the apologists of the bourgeoisie sought to reduce to atheism, while falsifying the very concept of atheism and declar—

⁴ S. Bulgakov, From Marxism to Idealism. St. Petersburg, 1905, p. 99.
⁵ S. Frank, The Spiritual Foundations of Society. Paris, 1933, p. 189.
⁶ S. Bulgakov, Two Cities. Vol. 1, Moscow, 1911, p. 7.
⁷ N. Berdyaev, Russian Religious Psychology and Communist Atheism. Paris, 1931, p. 29.
⁸ S. Bulgakov, Two Cities. Vol. 1, Moscow, 1911, p. 10.

... the philosophy of Marxism and scientific socialism as “a means for atheism.”

In the opinion of the theorists of the “new religious consciousness,” dialectical materialism and the doctrine of scientific communism have no theoretical or practical value. N. Berdyaev characterized dialectical materialism as an “absurd combination” of dialectics and materialism, in which materialism acts as “the shell of Marxism,” needed by Marxism for the struggle against Christianity. “One should not understand too literally the materialistic symbolism of communism; it is conditional and is only a struggle against the religion of Christianity,” N. Berdyaev insisted⁴. Dialectics, in N. Berdyaev’s view, is not applicable to matter; it is applicable only to logic, to the process of thought; materialism cannot be combined with dialectics. In a review of V. F. Asmus’s book Essays on the History of Dialectics in Modern Philosophy, N. Berdyaev wrote: “... dialectical materialism is a meaningless phrase; only a dialectic of thought, ideas, spirit is possible, not of atoms of matter, not of economics”⁵.

S. Bulgakov declared Marx’s dialectical method a “pure misunderstanding.” “Marx, indeed, has no dialectical method at all, other than Hegel’s... What Marx (and, after him, his school) called his method is in fact a manner of presenting his conclusions in the form of dialectical contradictions, a manner of writing in Hegel’s style”⁶. The apologists of the bourgeoisie, metaphysically opposing materialism and dialectics, pursued the aim of depriving the working class of the scientific worldview that dialectical materialism is. However, the scientific worldview of Marxism rests on the principle of recognizing the objectivity of the material world and its constant, consistent change, motion, and development. Only on the basis of this principle is it possible to understand the organic unity that exists between the dialectical method and materialist theory. Since by theory we mean the reflection, in concepts, of the laws of reality, dialectics is not only a method but also a theory. The theoretical propositions of dialectics are a reflection of objective regularities⁷. The methodological significance of materialist theory was convincingly demonstrated by K. Marx in contrasting his method with Hegel’s. “My dialectical method,” Marx wrote, “is not only fundamentally different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. For Hegel, the process of thinking, which he even transforms, under the name of the Idea, into an independent subject, is the demiurge of the real, which constitutes only its external manifestation. With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing other than the material transplanted into the human head and transformed in it”⁸. Dialectics can be genuinely scientific and consistent only on the basis of philosophical materialism. As for materialist theory, it develops, without any concessions to idealism, only in close connection with dialectics.

Marxist atheism, as the highest form of atheism, could become such by developing on the basis of dialectical materialism. It differs in principle from the atheism with which the “neo-Christians” operate; naturally, religious

philosophers who are irritated even by the very concept of scientific atheism, associated, in S. Frank’s view, with a “wooden iron.”

The theorists of the “new religious consciousness,” striving to present Marxism as a religion, use a traditional device of bourgeois ideology—analyzing Marx’s teaching in the categories of religious philosophy. Marxism, N. Berdyaev in particular asserts, has its own god, its own apocalypse, its own catechism, its own eschatology, and also its own orthodox scholasticism and inquisition⁹. In S. Bulgakov’s opinion, in Marxism the object of faith is “a mythological abstraction, the pantheistic concept of the law of development of the productive forces,” while to messianic sorrows Marxism, according to the “theory of impoverishment,” opposes the progressive impoverishment of the popular masses, accompanied by the growth of class antagonisms. The central category of the religion of Marxism, from the point of view of the “neo-Christians,” is the idea of the proletariat, the “god of Marxism.” Since the proletariat is an idea, the “neo-Christians” reason, in this aspect Marxism appears as idealism, striving to subordinate reality to an idea. “The messianic idea of the proletariat is the basic myth of Marxism, its inspiration, its activity, its capacity to evoke the activity and uprising of the working masses,” wrote N. Berdyaev¹⁰. The idea of the messianism of the proletariat, from N. Berdyaev’s point of view, is Marx’s most utopian and most original creation. “It is perfectly clear that Marx’s proletariat is not that empirical working class which we observe in reality; it is an idea-myth, and not an empirical reality”¹¹. The working class that has a place in capitalist society does not coincide with the idea of the proletariat, N. Berdyaev argues, since in its structure it is extremely complex and is characterized by different levels of self-consciousness.

However, as history testifies, the proletariat is not a myth and not an idea, but a real force in the struggle against the bourgeoisie, a force that is the bearer of communist ideology, which sets as its task the destruction of the bourgeois order by means of social revolution.

Marxists have never believed that the working class can be organized and led into struggle against social injustice on the basis of religion, of faith. On the contrary, the classics of Marxism-Leninism called for struggle against all forms of fideism, for the development of the independent, critical thinking of workers. The merit of Marxism lies in the fact that it transformed socialism from a utopia into a science, armed the working masses with scientific knowledge and an understanding of the laws of social development. Therefore Marx’s teaching is a source of the workers’ moral strength in the struggle for social progress, socialism, and communism. The source of this moral strength lies precisely in the scientific character, in the scientific worldview of Marxism, and not in fideism, in faith, as N. Berdyaev sought to present it. The working class, armed with the scientific theory of Marxism, is a living, moving force of history, a force that compels apologists of the bourgeoisie of the type of N. Berdyaev, S. Bulgakov, and S. Frank to take up the pen and seek out “new” variants of the defense of bourgeois society, not stopping at slander and ideological blackmail.

Identifying Marxism with religion, the theorists of the “new religious consciousness” attacked the principle of proletarian internationalism—

...seeking to weaken the class solidarity of the working people, to split the ranks of the working class. Proletarian internationalism, S. Bulgakov declared, is a “surrogate of churchly catholic consciousness.” “For what else, if not catholicity—if not of humanity, then at least of one part of it—does the appeal speak: ‘Workers of all countries, unite!’”^17). The religious philosopher counterposes to the fundamental interests of the international proletariat—its struggle for democracy and socialism, for liberation from class oppression—the idea of unification on a religious basis. An exponent of the “new” methods of apologetics for capitalism, S. Bulgakov understood that the international idea of class solidarity, carried through to its logical conclusion, means a colossal concentration of the power of the working people, against which capitalism cannot stand. Therefore the ideologists of the bourgeoisie hasten to disorient and misinform the working people, counterposing religious quests to revolutionary, socio-historical practice.

The object of attacks by bourgeois ideology has always been the Marxist principle of the dialectical unity and interaction of socio-historical practice and scientific theory. N. Berdyaev, in particular, counterposing the theory of Marxism to the historical practice and revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, wrote: “Marxism as an integral worldview is not at all based on historical experience and contradicts historical experience. It proceeds from propositions accepted on faith”^18). It should be noted at once that the theoretical untenability of this proposition lies above all in the metaphysical approach to the analysis of Marxism as a theory. To explain scientifically the essence of the theory of Marxism means to reveal the causes thanks to which Marxism arose and develops. And by means of metaphysics, which is the gnoseological basis of idealism and inevitably leads to it, this cannot be done.

The theoretical propositions of Marxism, its basic principles, reflect the dialectic of the development of objective reality and social practice. Marxism interprets practice as the objective activity of people directed toward the transformation of objective reality and, in the final analysis, determining all other manifestations of human activity. The essence of practice manifests itself in the active relation of man to the world of objective reality and in the relation of man to man in the process of transformative, productive activity. Therefore practice is not something abstract and one-sided; at each historically concrete stage of social development it appears as the manifestation of two forms of activity: material and socially transformative^19). The totality of these forms is determining for all types of human activity: productive activity constitutes the material basis, and socially transformative activity the socio-historical basis. Outside these basic forms of practice the existence of human society is impossible.

An essential aspect of practice is its interaction with theoretical activity. If, under the conditions of one type of practice, socially transformative activity is conditioned by everyday consciousness and empirical knowledge, then under the conditions of another type it not only requires scientific theory as its guide, but is simply impossible without it. In particular, under the conditions of the development and decay

^17) S. Bulgakov. Two Cities. Vol. 2, 1911, p. 45.
^18) N. Berdyaev. Marxism and Religion. Warsaw, 1929, p. 32.
^19) I. T. Yakushevsky. On the Basic Forms of Practice. Scholarly Notes of the Department of Dialectical and Historical Materialism of the Higher Party School under the Central Committee of the CPSU. Issue 2, Moscow, 1960.

capitalism, the proletariat, which had grown into a class, needed a scientific theory. Such a theory was Marxism as the worldview of the workers. The fidelity of the theory of Marxism was proved in the last century by the progressive, revolutionary activity of the proletariat.

The theory of Marxism, reflecting such objective laws as the inevitability of the downfall of capitalism, the necessity and law-governed character of the creation of socialism and communism, demonstrated such features of a scientific theory as objective truth, logical integrity, and consistency. An arbitrary, subjectivist attitude toward the Marxist worldview inevitably leads apologists of the bourgeoisie of N. Berdyaev’s type into contradictions with objective reality, while the conclusions they put forward hang in the air, finding no confirmation in life. The truth of Marxism, the correspondence of its conclusions to objective reality, arouses the anger of the theoreticians of “neo-Christianity,” who are perplexed: “Why should the truth be revealed to a filthy, dirty worker...?”^20^.

The apologists of the bourgeoisie—the “neo-Christians”—sought to turn history backward, to disarm the working masses, and to tear the working class away from the ideology of Marxism. This tendency brings the theoreticians of the “new religious consciousness” closer to the opportunists and revisionists. S. Bulgakov, in particular, considered just the revisionist reduction of Marxism to petty reforms to be correct, thereby denying the very idea of social revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. He wrote: “Bernstein destroys the revolutionary soul of Marxism—the idea of the messianism of the proletariat, the idea of class struggle. Bernsteinism is Marxism that has clipped its spiritual wings, deprived of its former religious inspiration and idealistic sweep, reduced to the preaching of small deeds in social policy.”^21^.

S. Bulgakov tries to emphasize the “objectivity” of his analysis of Marxism, asserting that Marxism is allegedly a positive arrangement of “small deeds,” of the everyday benefits of man. But Marxism cannot inspire man, argues the religious philosopher, lighten his earthly sufferings, or indicate the goal and path of human life. In Bulgakov’s opinion, only Christianity can fill human life with meaning—but not old, historical Christianity, rather a “new” Christianity, cleansed of the sins of history, life-affirming. The “new,” life-affirming Christianity will give Marxism the spiritual foundation it lacks: “...let the socialists become Christians, and thereby their socialism too will be Christianized.”^22^.

Bulgakov’s variations on the theme of the “new,” goal- and meaning-giving Christianity are a typical expression of the ideas of Christian socialism. Christian socialism was one of the chief means of struggle against the workers’ movement not only among the “neo-Christians” in Russia, but also in the West. The ideas of Christian socialism found their reflection in the papal encyclical Rerum novarum. In connection with this, V. I. Lenin wrote that “the abuse of words is the most ordinary phenomenon in politics. The supporters of English bourgeois liberalism, for example, called themselves ‘Socialists’ more than once ... as did the supporters of Bismarck and the friends of Pope Leo XIII.”^23^.

Another method of falsifying the Marxist-Leninist worldview is the counterposing of Marx’s doctrine, as a theory as a whole, to the practical realization of his ideas on Russian soil.

^20^ N. Berdyaev. Marxism and Religion. Warsaw, 1929, p. 34.
^21^ S. Bulgakov. Christianity and Socialism. Moscow, 1917, p. 39.
^22^ S. Bulgakov. From Marxism to Idealism. St. Petersburg, 1905, p. 14.
^23^ V. I. Lenin. Collected Works, vol. 11, p. 118.

Marxism is obsolete, Berdyaev asserts. “Russian communism arose in an entirely different historical situation, unknown to Marx, in the new world of the East, and it altered Marx beyond recognition, while remaining faithful only to the antireligious spirit of Marxism”¹². Therefore Russian communism is supposedly alien to the West, unacceptable in the West; it is a product of Russian civilization. Russian civilization, in the opinion of the “neo-Christians,” is permeated by the spirit of messianism, which runs from the Russian “schism” to the Slavophiles, from them to Solovyov and Dostoevsky, and later to the religious-philosophical currents of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

From the idea of the messianism of the Russian people the “neo-Christians” derived the idea of the “Russian soul,” to which pity, compassion, and humanity are inherent. These qualities of the Russian soul, from the point of view of the religious mystics, found original expression in the revolution of 1917. Thanks to its religious self-sacrifice and passion, N. Berdyaev asserted, the “Russian soul” responded to the defective religion of Marxism, and Marx’s rationalism, having been “refracted” in the irrational Russian element, was deformed. The result of this deformation was Russian communism.

On these and similar “proofs” the “neo-Christians” build a whole conception of the difference between Leninism and Marx’s teaching; they “reveal” the essence of communism, its “Eastern” and “Western” roots, explaining that Marxism found application in Russia only because it is a peculiar religion. The religious content of Marxism allegedly links it with Leninism; precisely for this reason, “Lenin perceived not so much the scientific elements of Marxism as its messianic elements”¹³, wrote N. Berdyaev.

Therefore communism too, in Berdyaev’s opinion, appears as a religious faith that arose at the intersection of Marxism as rationalism and the irrational Russian element, as a peculiar religion¹⁴. Communism is interpreted by the “neo-Christians” as a definite faith, a faith opposed to Christianity. The spiritual perfection of communists and their highest human qualities are explained by the theorists of the “new religious consciousness” by the influence and action of religion—communism. “The best type of communist, i.e. a person wholly possessed by service to an idea, capable of enormous sacrifices and of disinterested enthusiasm, is possible only as a consequence of the Christian education of human souls... The results of this Christian influence, often invisible and supra-conscious, remain even when, in their consciousness, people have renounced Christianity and have even become its enemies. If we allow that antireligious propaganda will finally eradicate the traces of Christianity in the souls of Russian people, then the realization of communism will become impossible”¹⁵.

This proposition of N. Berdyaev became one of the starting points for contemporary falsifiers of the history of Leninism and communism in Russia—the anti-communists. On the basis of these fabrications they tried, and are trying, to prove that despite the “religious kinship” of Marxism and Leninism, Lenin’s ideas and the experience of the 1917 revolution are a “purely Russian” phenomenon, having no significance for other countries.

The theorists of the “new religious consciousness” propagated the idea that “Marx is obsolete and belongs to the departed nineteenth century,”

when social questions were resolved with the aid of class struggle. “Marxism is very outdated and no longer corresponds at all to the contemporary level of scientific and philosophical knowledge, or to contemporary reality...” ^28) In the twentieth century, in the opinion of the “neo-Christians,” social questions are posed in a new way: all social problems supposedly develop into technical ones and can be solved by means of eschatology.

The position of the “neo-Christians” that Marx is outdated is fundamentally incorrect. We still turn today to the works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin; in particular, the basic fundamental characteristics of capitalism have remained valid over the course of a century, and the doctrine of class struggle as the driving force of history is confirmed by a great body of factual material—the result of the communist, workers’, and national-liberation movements. Marxism as a scientific theory is gaining an ever greater number of adherents.

Under the new conditions of the twentieth century, the conclusions drawn by Lenin in his article “Our Programme” in 1899 remain valid. V. I. Lenin, stressing the need for the creative development of Marxism, wrote: “We do not by any means regard Marx’s theory as something completed and inviolable; on the contrary, we are convinced that it has only laid the cornerstones of the science which socialists must advance in all directions if they do not want to lag behind life.” ^29) However, in the path of the creative development of the Marxist-Leninist worldview there arise the “new” theories of Bulgakov, Berdyaev, and others, which distort and falsify the scientific attitude toward reality, distort the meaning of the communist worldview, call for a turn backward, and resurrect the doctrines and principles of Christian socialism and neo-Kantianism, which have already become a stage that has been passed through.

But the power of the system of socialism, and the vitality and profound truth of the ideas of Marxism-Leninism, testify to the absurdity and pseudoscientific character of the “neo-Christian” pretensions.

^28) N. Berdyaev, Marxism and Religion. Warsaw, 1929, p. 4.
^29) V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 4, p. 184.

1. Materials of the XXIV Congress of the CPSU. Moscow, 1971, pp. 20–21. ↩

2. N. Berdyaev. Marxism and Religion. Warsaw, 1929, p. 24. ↩

3. S. Frank. Materialism as a Worldview. Warsaw, 1928, p. 24. ↩

4. N. Berdyaev. Marxism and Religion. Warsaw, 1929, p. 17. ↩

5. N. Berdyaev, Put’, 1931, No. 27, p. 109. ↩

6. S. Bulgakov. Two Cities. Vol. 1, Moscow, 1911, p. 82. ↩

7. A. Furman. Materialist Dialectics. Moscow State University Press, 1969, p. 3. ↩

8. K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, vol. 23, p. 21. ↩

9. N. Berdyaev. “The General Line in Soviet Philosophy and Militant Atheism.” Put’, No. 34, [[unclear: Proceedings]]. ↩

10. N. Berdyaev. Marxism and Religion. Warsaw, 1929, p. 38. ↩

11. N. Berdyaev. “Truth and Falsehood of Communism.” Put’, 1931, No. 26, p. 17. ↩

12. N. Berdyaev, Marxism and Religion. Warsaw, 1929, p. 4. ↩

13. N. Berdyaev, Russian Religious Psychology and Communist Atheism, Paris, 1931, p. 37. ↩

14. N. Berdyaev, “Put’,” 1931, No. 30, p. 7. ↩

15. N. Berdyaev, The Origins and Meaning of Russian Communism. Paris, 1945, p. 138. ↩