In this chapter by Raymond Aron, from his book The Opium of the Intellectuals, he seeks to answer an age-old question of whether a Godless doctrine deserves to be called a religion? He states it is based upon one’s definition of the words involved but the doctrine of the Communists provides a global interpretation of the universe, while fixing the hierarchy of values and creating norms of good behavior. It fulfills almost all things that a traditional religion would satisfy. However, he asks “what is the meaning of a secular religion in the West, in an environment impregnated with Christianity?”
In the first section, Aron seeks to differentiate between the economic and religious attraction of Communism. He begins by stating that Communism arose as a result of a decline in the spirituality of people as well as the authority of the Church. Therefore, people twisted their passion for religion into passion for political action. The proletariat must see the Party as their vanguard and their dedication to the Party must be “total and unreserved”. This in turn forces society to deny known facts in order to take the place of real conflicts of human nature and their premise for existence in society. They hope to rewrite history and create their own philosophy in which the Party is never wrong and knows everything. They are then able to solve any aspect of human difference of opinion with a doctrine that can be twisted in every and any direction. Overall, the only way to achieve this is through total domination and violence in order to keep people in check.
He then goes into speak about the militants and the sympathizers. There are distinctions between the socialists that follow along the Communist trajectory militantly and those who sympathize for the cause but do not agree with the extent of violence and destruction it creates in society. Aron goes further to defend the socialist ideology in being open to the idea of communism and shifting between trust and despair caused by the ambiguous nature of secular religion and the hardening of opinions. He then defines the three stages of Communism in transforming from an ideology to a religion. It begins with the proletariat understanding their role and their symbol within the Communist Party. The second stage is the interpretation of facts and history to satisfy the dogma of Communism. Lastly, the third stage is one that true Christians could never fully ascribe to which is the idea that humanity will become perfect and organized under Communism. This essentially means that humanity is not defined by Christ’s crucifixion but is now a creature of Marx’s prophecies.
In the next section, Aron seeks to define the evolution of Civil Religion into Stalinism. He defines Bolshevism as being inspired by the idea of godlessness and it established its own path of truth through science. He then describes much of the progression of Communism and how it became such a prominent ideology. Mankind craves fulfillment in their hearts and without God they require something to fill that void. Aron states that intellectuals are the only ones that are capable of inventing such a an idea and is one of the main reasons intellectuals are especially vulnerable to the teachings of Communism. It is their own work that created such an ideology of truth, how could they deny that.
To finish, Aron writes that the final step in evolving an ideology to a religion is when the curators no long submit to history but write it and are all-knowing of the future and are in charge of it as if they are God. In essence it ruins relationship building and seeks to end hope and truth as they were traditionally intended to be in a God-fearing society because their entire life is based on their earthly existence.
Discussion Questions:
- Why is it that Christianity itself is targeted as needing to be eradicated in the eyes of the Communists and not other such religions?
- How can intellectuals justify Communism when their premise is based on subjective interpretation of truth?
- Why does Christianity or faith in God persist even when intellectuals, who are held to such a high esteem, say it is falsehood? Or vice versa, why is Communism not all over the world if such a teaching is considered the new dogma?
One reply on “Introduction for “Intellectuals in Search of a Religion””
One of the questions asked in this blog post interested me. The question states, “Why is it that Christianity itself is targeted as needing to be eradicated in the eyes of Communists and not other such religions?” Communism is inherently secularist and materialistic. Most people believing in communism believe that religious groups are just people who are in fear and want to feel safe and apart of something. Communists as well as Christians both believe in their own causes. They believe in living in order to promote their cause. Some people could argue that communism is itself a religion of some sort. If a communist party is in power, it is expected that everyone is in full support of the communist cause. Religion is a threat to that idea, because then people would be believing in a higher power which would be higher than the communist party in power. It is interesting that Aron discusses the idea that people shifted from their passion for religion to their passion for communism. It reminded me of Durkheim’s work on Suicide. Durkheim discusses the idea that when people do not feel apart of a community or cause, that is what leads them to suicide. He finds that in certain religious groups, such as Christianity, where there is more community and togetherness, suicide rates are less. This is how I think about the idea of the shift from passion for religion to communism. People constantly need a cause or an idea to be apart of, in order to feel like they are participating and contributing to society. This leads to my final point, and how this relates to intellectuals as a whole. Intellectuals can sometimes become alienated from society (as we spoke about in class earlier in the semester), and we discussed how it can be because there are so many intellectuals that a lot of them do not find their calling. They end up having so many advanced thoughts and ideas, but nothing to do with them. This leads to the alienation that Durkheim talks about. When people do not believe they are apart of something greater, it can lead to a severe form of alienation.