[This is Chapter 23 of Murphey's book Socialist Thought.]

 

23

THE NEW THEOCRACY

Liberalism in its classic form sought a separation of church and state.  This policy is expressed in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, where it calls for the state neither to establish a "state church" nor to interfere with the "free exercise" of religion within the society.

Such a separation is consistent with classical liberal ends: to limit power by dividing and decentralizing it; to enhance the liberty of the individual; and to give impetus to creative effort, in this case in the area of religion, by releasing the vital energies of millions of people.

The separation was opposed, of course, by those who hoped to continue or to restore the medieval consensus.  The organic unity of church and state in a society dominated by religion and tradition was the very essence of medieval culture. 

The societies in the West committed to liberal values have since the eighteenth century overwhelmingly attained the separation, giving up the medieval unity.  Gray-area issues will always remain relating to the exact dividing line between church and state; and the abortion issue remains very much alive because of the conflict between theistic and humanistic views about when it is that human existence begins.  But for the most part it would appear that the "separation of church and state" has been achieved.

I believe, however, that in a larger sense this is a chimera.  It is true that the church-in-the-old-sense is now separate in the West from the state.  What we fail to see in these terms, however, even though we see it in other ways, is that the twentieth century has been a century of secular religions, themselves very much at odds with the classical liberal desire for a society of free individuals, and that these new social religions have been exceedingly anxious to use the state as their primary instrument.

The main ideological disputes of the twentieth century have been waged over this affinity of secular religions for the modern state.  This is not to say that classical liberalism does not itself need government and a profound ethical, legal and social consensus.  Its values cannot be attained by anything resembling a complete existential freedom.   Ideally, in my opinion, such a society requires a certain secular religiosity; and I call for the intellectuals to serve as a mild "clerisy" to guide and uplift the society.   But all of this is far removed from the powerfully integrative subordination of the individual that is sought by the various collectivist ideologies.  From a classical liberal standpoint, the cry of the twenty-first century should be for the separation of the state from secular religion.

In this chapter, I want to highlight the two main aspects of what I consider to be "the new theocracy":

. The desire within a great deal of socialist thought to remake mankind - often in the image of the intellectual; and

. The dominant role that is given to the intellectuals as the new priestly class governing an all-powerful combination of secular-church and state.

Ivan Szelenyi has shown his awareness of both of these aspects when he has said that Marxism within the Soviet Union plays the role of a "state religion" that has become the worldview of a "new dominant class."¹

 

The desire to remold mankind.   Salvador Allende distinguished between "mere reformism" and "a socialist project for man."  He admonished his supporters that "if we forget for a single moment that our aim is to establish a socialist project for man, then all the struggles of our people for socialism will be turned into just another attempt at reformism."  He wanted to "build a new nation with a new morality.”²

For many socialists, this desire for transcendence is a defining characteristic of socialism.  They do not readily admit to the truly "socialistic" character of welfare liberalism, modern social democracy or even Eurocommunism.  All of these have, in their opinion, made too many compromises and lost their vision of a transformed humanity.  This is a perspective that is not shared in, of course, by the social democrats and Eurocommunists who are so charged.

Here are a few of the many passages within socialist writing calling for a remolding of mankind through socialism:

. Lassalle.   Kirkup says that "Lassalle quotes approvingly the view of August Boeckh: “That we must widen our notion of the State so as to believe that the State is the institution in which the whole virtue of humanity should be realised.”³

. Saint-Simon.  Lichtheim says that "Saint-Simonism has been described as 'the religion of the engineers.’⁴    Kirkup adds that Saint-Simon "advocated an arrangement by which the industrial chiefs should control society.   In place of the Medieval Church, the spiritual direction of society should fall to the men of science."

. Hitler.  Werner Maser says of Hitler that “his intention had always been not merely to dominate the people but completely to refashion and, indeed, recreate their minds anew along racial-ideological lines.”⁵ 

. Sombart.  Here we see reference to "a super-individual something -- call it an idea -- for which man sacrifices himself." Sombart quotes the Romantic Adam Muller to the effect that "the state is not merely a manufactory, a homestead, an assurance association or a mercantile society; it is the intimate union of all the physical and spiritual needs."⁶

. Comte.  John Stuart Mill said of Auguste Comte that in the later part of his career Comte "came forth transfigured as the High Priest of the Religion of Humanity."  Mill explained that "when we say that M. Comte has erected his philosophy into a religion, the word religion must not be understood in its ordinary sense . . . His religion is without a God . . . What, in truth, are the conditions necessary to constitute a religion?   There must be a creed, or conviction, claiming authority over the whole of human life; a belief . . . to which the believer inwardly acknowledges that all his actions ought to be subordinate.  Moreover, there must be a sentiment . . . sufficiently powerful to give it in fact, the authority over human conduct to which it lays claim in theory.”⁷

. Bosanquet.  Adam Ulam says that "modern idealism in its most representative modern spokesman becomes a type of secular religion.  It is worship of the state . . . The church of the Middle Ages reappears in a new guise and the modern state is endowed with powers and significance in consequence of man's fallen status.”⁸

. Marx.  Marek Fritzhand says of Marx that "he saw in communism the radical transformation of the whole of human existence."⁹ (His emphasis)

. Rubel.  Maximilien Rubel argues that the twin ideas of Utopia and Revolution are at the heart of socialism.  He says that "from the start, socialism appears with all the characteristics of a new Gospel -- a message of worldly liberation and salvation.”¹⁰

. New socialist man.  Merryn Jones tells us that within Marxist thought "there was a great deal of talk about ‘the new man,’ who was said to conduct himself in every respect in a fashion undreamed of before.  (This 'new man' went into limbo after 1956, but I was fascinated to meet him again when I went to Cuba in 1968.)"¹¹

. Mussolini.  One of Mussolini's "pet phrases," we are told, was l’unomo nuovo, which means "totally renovated man."  Vetterli and Fort quote Mussolini as saying that fascism "does not merely aim at remolding the forms of life, but also their content, man, his character and faith.”¹²

My notes contain many other examples.  It is clearly a major theme within socialist thought.   Some socialists, however, have said that they oppose such a secular-religious focus.  Harold Laski spoke of "the fetish of state-divinity which I hate as the successor of the medieval church.”¹³   Michael Harrington says that "it is important to root out every bit of messianism from the socialist vision, to reject the notion of a secular redemption that, like the incarnation of Christ, claims to make all things new.  Every time men have acted upon that kind of chiliastic definition, the result has been totalitarian."¹⁴   We should notice that Laski and Harrington both acknowledge the importance of the role of secular religion as a component of much socialist thinking.

The messianic vision is closely related to the collectivist ethos that I described in Chapter 15.  There is an easy link between Mussolini's sentiment that I have quoted above about remaking man and his declaration that "nothing is (to be) done outside the state.”¹⁵

 

"All power to the . . . intellectuals."  Another aspect of socialism as a "new theocracy" relates to the nature of the priesthood that is to preside over it.

Despite the rhetoric championing the have-nots, socialism is primarily a movement by the alienated intelligentsia.  We have also seen that the most important motivator of the intellectuals has been their "displacement," their rivalry for power and status with the "man of action."

Lewis Feuer writes that the "impressive tradition of philosophical Utopias . . . all shared the same vision of the rule of the scientific intellectuals."¹⁶

There is a growing literature not only about the alienation of the intellectuals but about the “class power” that they either possess or are thought to be gaining.  This means that the world's intellectual community has become more self-critical, examining its own springs and motives.  I for one am hopeful that this will provide the basis for overcoming the phenomenon of alienation and will remove the naivete that has been so fundamental to the assumption that central direction by the intellectuals can solve all problems.  If these changes occur, as they seem to be, we will be caused thereby to move into a new phase of history.

I will not attempt an exhaustive review of the literature on the "class power" of the intellectuals, but will focus instead on the recent commentary by Alvin W. Gouldner in The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class and by George Konrad and Ivan Szelenyi in The Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power.

. Gouldner.  Gouldner speaks in terms of the rise of a "New Class" that will be composed of the "intelligentsia" (which is defined to mean technical people) and the "intellectuals" (a term that with Gouldner means more humanistic, value-oriented people).   He indicates that this New Class is not yet the ruling class, but that it may come to be.

He recognizes the alliance with the have-nots.  "One basic class strategy of the New Class is to cultivate an alliance with a mass working class, proletariat or peasantry, to sharpen the conflict between that mass and the old class . . . A 'welfare' state and a 'Socialist' state are both political strategies of the New Class.  An essential difference is that in a socialist state, the hegemony of the New Class is fuller, its control over the working class is greater."¹⁷

Gouldner views the New Class in broad cultural terms, seeing that a world intellectual community has been developing that constitutes a "speech community," since its members speak an "elaborated linguistic variant."  Such people possess "cultural capital," in that they can command a flow of income from their investment in education.

He envisions not a revolution on behalf of the New Class, but a gradual filling of all spaces by it.  "The New Class's rise will more nearly be like that of the bourgeoisie . . . That is, it will have hundreds of years of development . . . before they cap their rise with all the trappings of political authority."

In a quick review of the literature, he tells of several reactions to this phenomenon:

. Galbraith, Bell and Berle and Means, he says, see the New Class as already situated in positions of influence and as essentially benevolent.

. Bakunin and Machajski (whom I assume is the same person as the Makhaisky mentioned by Trotsky) see it as a new exploiting class.

. Talcott Parsons thinks of it as a professional stratum that uplifts the old class. 

. Chomsky and Zeitlin, however, see it as servile to the "old class.”

. Finally, Gouldner's own view is that the New Class is a coming "universal" class that is "the prefigured embodiment of such future as the working class still has.  It is that part of the working class which will survive cybernation."   He takes a mixed but somewhat favorable view of its future role.  It is "flawed" because it works for its own self-interest (i.e., for its own “guild advantage”) and is divided by inherent tensions between the technical intelligentsia and the humanistic intellectuals.

I find a great deal worthwhile in Gouldner's analysis.  It perceives clearly the primary dynamic factor in modern ideology, that the intellectuals have pursued their class interests and have allied with the have-nots.  He sees that they have built the socialist movement as a vehicle for enhancing their own power while at the same time serving sincerely-held compassionate objectives.  It seems to me that a review of the past century and a half clearly shows that the intellectuals have acted in their class interest.

Where I differ is in the projection for the future.  Prophecy is something about which I see good reason to be humble; there are just too many factors, many of them unknown to us or very subtle, and there is no way to assess in advance the effects of their interaction or the relative weights they will assume.  In addition to this overall agnosticism, I am agnostic on the specific point as to whether an enormously expanded educated and technical population will have enough homogeneity and inclination to constitute a "class" in any very meaningful sense.  We have to be careful about an important distinction here.  Classical liberalism has seen society in terms of a harmonious system accommodating all elements; Marxism has thought in terms of class division.  I would certainly hope that in a society in which knowledge is the primary form of "capital" the possessors of that knowledge, especially if they number in the many millions, will share a basic identification with the society as a whole and not see themselves as separate from it.   This is certainly the classical liberal aspiration for which I would work, although I have no way to know whether it will be realized in fact.  It is a mistake, however, for anyone, Marxist or neo-Hegelian included, to assume that there will necessarily be a continued "class" identity for those who work with technical and normative matters.

Konrad and Szelenyi.   In The Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power, these two Hungarian intellectuals make a fascinating sociological analysis of the role that the intelligentsia has played in modern life and especially in Eastern Europe, which to them includes the Soviet Union.

They clearly recognize the secular-religious nature of what the modern intelligentsia had done, and the aspirations of the intellectual for a priestly leadership.  They accordingly speak of the desire that intellectuals within utopian socialism felt for a “new telelogical mission.”¹⁸   As we have noted before, they say that Marxists within the U.S.S.R. have developed a state religion as the outlook that pervades their own class dominance.

They point out that Eastern European intellectuals were already steeped in the ways of "teleological redistribution" even before the influence of Marxism swept over them.  Centuries of monarchy had developed a centralized system.  The intellectuals embraced socialism because it appeared to offer them stimulating opportunities and because they "longed for" a situation in which they would not be controlled by non-intellectuals.

Within capitalist society, they say, intellectuals rebelled against the market, thinking it unworthy as a way to determine the value of their works.  Marxism championed the proletariat, but in doing so gave center stage to the alienated intelligentsia, since they were to be the articulators of the proletariat's grievances.  But the intellectuals were for many years not aware that in advocating socialism they were developing a worldview that would establish their own class dominance.

Konrad and Szelenyi see intellectuals as essentially bottled up within a market society, unable to form a true class around the technocracy.  Here, they say, there is a clash among "principles of legitimation."  In a market society the "hegemony of intellectual knowledge" is not paramount, but must coexist with a democratic political system and with a private-property economic system in which the owners of capital have control over industrial policy.

The intelligentsia was made into an elitist vanguard for the working class by Lenin.  This meant that the Communist Party was to focus on the seizure of power, not settle for merely representing workers within a capitalistic system.  Konrad and Szelenyi say that this was able to work in Russia because intellectuals had been sufficiently apart from the market that they had not been seduced by its attractions and because the proletariat was not yet large enough to exert its own power.

Once socialism was established in the Soviet Union and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, it has been passing through three stages, according to Konrad and Szelenyi.  The first phase was Stalinist, in which the intellectual class as a whole was suppressed in favor of an unthinkingly loyal elite, which even had the elite of the political police within it to assure its compliance.  The result was that the intellectuals themselves were the subjects of the purges, and the political police became an inner group that served as an "elite of the elite."

The second phase is the one that presently exists.  It is a period of shared rule that represents a compromise between the elite from the Stalinist phase and the intellectual class.  There is a sharing of power between the intelligentsia and the "ruling elite," although predominance resides in the latter.  Conflicts exist within this compromise, and there has been a counteroffensive through which the ruling elite has sought to reestablish its earlier position.  A number of intellectuals stand outside the compromise, relegated to the role of the "marginal intelligentsia."  Konrad and Szelenyi are among them.

The second period has effected a number of changes within Communist society.  Collective leadership has become prevalent.  At least a semblance of the Rule of Law has been achieved, although Konrad and Szelenyi seem quite tongue-in-cheek about what this amounts to.  The Stalinist emphasis on Industrialization has been mitigated in favor of somewhat more support for agriculture and consumer goods.  A pluralism of viewpoints has developed in Marxist ideology, even though this is resisted at the center by those who cling to the purely dogmatic version.  Finally, some allowance has been made for private life, so that everything is no longer politicized.

What Konrad and Szelenyi favor for the third period differs from what they believe will probably occur.  They favor an "alternative socialism" that will not involve the rule of the intellectuals as a class, but that will create a "free association of direct producers" in which the central legitimating principle will be the ability to work.  They thus seek to return socialism to a proletarian base.

They predict the coming, however, of a matured socialism that will unabashedly call into play the “class power” of the intelligentsia.  Here, the legitimating principle will be professional standing and attainment.  In its early stages, this third period will involve a parity between the ruling elite and the broader intellectual class; but individuals will then emerge who will become quite open about their advocacy of the intellectuals' class power.

The result of this long process, Konrad and Szelenyi say, has been the exploitation of the working class by socialism.  The advent of socialism has not done away with inequalities or with alienation in the Marxist sense; rather, it has brought about “new methods” of exploitation and dictatorship.

The book by these two Hungarian authors is not a complete statement of their thinking about socialism.  They say that they have deliberately chosen not to express the inferences that should be drawn from their analysis.  And considerable irony and restraint is apparent, probably giving us an example of the dissimulation and Aesopian language which have so long been a part of the intellectual discourse within those societies.

I have reviewed the main thesis of their book for two reasons: It has real merit and instructional value because it goes to the heart of the principal dynamic within modern ideology.  There are a great many illuminating passages.  And their book as a whole is a monument to the human spirit in its demonstration of the courage of the authors.

NOTES

1. George Konrad and Ivan Szelenyi, The Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1979), p. xvi.

 

2. Salvador Allende, Chile's Road to Socialism (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1973), pp.  145, 62.

3. Thomas Kirkup, History of Socialism (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1909), pp. 101, 24-25.

4. George Lichtheim, A Short History of Socialism (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970), p. 46. 

5. Werner Maser, Hitler (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1971), p. 258.

6. Werner Sombart, A New Social Philosophy (New York: Greenwood Press, 1969), p. 159.

7. John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961), pp. 125, 132, 133.

8. Adam B. Ulam, Philosophical Foundations of English Socialism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951), pp. 58, 59.

9. Article by Marek Fritzhand, "Marx's Ideal of Man," Socialist Humanism, Erich Fromm (ed.) (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1965), p. 172.

10. Article by Maximilien Rubel, "Reflections on Utopia and Revolution," Socialist Humanism, p. 212.

11. Ralph Miliband and John Seville (ed.s), The Socialist Register 1976 (London: The Merlin Press, 1976), pp. 73, 74.

12. Richard Vetterli and William E. Fort, The Socialist Revolution (Los Angeles: Clute International Corporation, no year given), pp. 36, 43.

13. Mark DeWolfe Howe (ed.), Holmes-Laski Letters  (Cambridge: Harvard Universit y Press, 1953), p. 71.

14. Michael Harrington, Socialism (New York: Saturday Review Press, 1970), p. 5.

15. Benito Mussolini, My Autobiography (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1939). p. 224.

16. Lewis S. Feuer, Marx and the Intellectuals (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1969), p. 58.

17. Alvin W. Gouldner, The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class (New York: The Seabury Press, 1979), pp. 17, 27, 31.

18. Konrad and Szelenyi, Class Power, pp. 70, xvi, 203, 204, 70, 71, 76-77, 140, 74, 186, 201, 195-200, xvi, 224, 189, 209, xv.