Mysticism and CommunismAuthor(s): Alfred StiernotteReviewed work(s):Source: Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Spring, 1967), pp. 110-112Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of Society for the Scientific Study of ReligionStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1384203 .Accessed: 28/10/2011 19:33

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MYSTICISM AND COMMUNISM

ALFRED STIERNOTTE Department of Philosophy

Quinnipiac College

While mysticism and communism are not at all related at the practical level of Marxist political discussion and action, they show similarities at the level of their evaluation as cosmic philosophies. Dialectical materialism includes: (1) a rejection of mechanical materialism; (2) the affirmation that mental and spiritual qualities are irreducible to physics and chemistry; (3) the sense of the mystery of the world; (4) the Hegelian dialectic im- plying the unity and interconnection of all things as they are permeated by the One; (5) the fact that even Marx and Engels mentioned mystics among their precursors; (6) the appreciation of the evolutionary mys- ticism of Teilhard de Chardin by Marxists.

pROFESSOR Angeles could call on con- siderable scholarly support for his

claim that "there is a mystical strain in the very roots of dialectical materialism"1 and I wish to suggest some of this sup- port. It is to be noted, however, that the materialism of dialectical materialism is strongly opposed to vulgar mechanical materialism, and therefore, insofar as mystical overtones may be implied in Marxism, they are opposed to mechanical materialism.

It is significant that John Lewis, a British Marxist philosopher, finds a defi- nite rapprochement between Meister Eck- hart and communism:

Eckhart from a very different point of view dissolved the idea of a separate transcendent Deity into the conception

of the potentiality of being, rather after the fashion of Whitehead. God is un- knowable only because all the poten- tialities of life are not yet realised. There is nothing more Divine than the human soul. Is this the materialism of the Marx- ist type? If we remember that Marxism never attempts to reduce spirit to matter, but, on the contrary, declares that spir- itual activities are the highest functions of matter, we shall see how near the great mystic is to the secularism of Communism.2

But a more important contribution is from the Thomist scholar, Gustav A. Wetter, in the concluding chapter of his masterly study, Dialectical Materialism:

Despite its campaign against any sort of "mysticism," dialectical materialism, with its doctrine of the "contradictions" in the world, has restored to its adherents a 1 Peter A. Angeles, "Comments on Professor

Clark's 1965 Presidential Address 'The Mystical

Consciousness"', Journal for the Scientific Study

of Religion, V, No. 2, pp. 291-293; Walter Hous-

ton Clark, "A Reply to Professor Angeles,"

Ibid., pp. 294-295.

2 John Lewis, Karl Polanyi, Donald K.

Kitchin (eds.), Christianity and the Social

Revolution (London: Victor Gollancz, Ltd.,

1935), p. 500.

MYSTICISM AND COMMUNISM 111

feeling for the paradox and mystery of the world and has thereby prepared the ground for the revival of a truly philo- sophical "sense of wonder." . . . Dialectical materialism, despite its verbal hostility to all forms of "mysticism," is neverthe- less endued at bottom with a certain "mystical" vein.3

Furthermore, Wetter emphasizes "points of contact between Soviet philosophy and certain intuitions dear to many non-Marxian Russian philosophers," one of these points being "the Slavophile movement in its religious and theolog- ical phase ... and with the powerful school of Russian religious thought which grew out of it, and which leads, through V. Soloviev, to such modern Russian philosophers of religion as S. Bulgakov, N. Berdyaev, S. Frank, P. Flo- renski, L. Karsavin and others."4

The second point of contact mentioned by Wetter is the Hegelian dialectic:

This affinity can be apprehended most clearly, perhaps, in respect of a feature already dwelt upon, the adoption of the Hegelian dialectic, which despite its "ma- terialist inversion" continues to lend a certain touch of "mysticism" to the dia- lectical materialist view.... In virtue of this connection one may perhaps ven- ture to assert that the element of "mysti- cism" deriving from the dialectic is the very feature in Marxism which has enabled it to attain such sweeping success in Russia.5

And the third feature vindicated by Wetter has to do with the sense of the One pervading the multiplicity of things in the world:

And finally there is yet a third feature which brings out the striking affinity between Leninist philosophy and Russian religious thought: this is the typically

romantic vision, again ultimately inherited from Hegel, of a reciprocal inner connec- tion and unity pervading the infinite mul- tiplicity of essences in the world. We may remember what it was in Hegel that so delighted Lenin: the idea, splendid in spite of its "mysticism," of a "living" (1) interconnection of everything with every- thing else. And like the idea of the unity of opposites, this intuition also goes back to the conceptions prevailing in Platonic, and still more in neo-Platonic, mysticism.6

If space permitted, it would be possible to develop this intuition of universal unity in the process theology of V. Solo- viev, one of the greatest representatives of Russian religious thought. As a matter of fact, Wetter himself is somewhat em- barrassed to find these relationships between the cosmic philosophy of Marx- ism and religious thought, not only in mysticism but in Thomism:

One of the most surprising things that our exposition of the Soviet philosophical system has revealed to us is the existence of a very wide-ranging correspondence between certain fundamental categories of thought and lines of inquiry in Soviet philosophy on the one hand, and those of Scholasticism, or even Thomism, on the other.7

It should be pointed out, of course,that such a rapprochement between Marxism and Thomism occurs at the high level of cosmic philosophic reflection, and not at all with respect to the political par- tisanship of the warring Marxian sects. But to return to mysticism, no less an authority than R. C. Zaehner adds his testimony to the underlying foundation of mystical universality in Marxism:

When we come to study just whom among the ancients Marx and Engels considered to be the true precursors of dialectical materialism, we find not a 3 Gustav A. Wetter, Dialectical Materialism

(New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1963), p. 552. 4 Ibid., pp. 552-553. 6 Ibid., p. 553.

6 Ibid., p. 554. 7 Ibid., p. 556.

112 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION

few who are more usually ranked among the mystics than among the materialists. Of these we need only mention Heraclitus and the Buddhists, and, among the mod- erns, Jakob Boehme. What is common to these is that they saw reality as a never- ending flux set over against a never- changing ground, and this is the first dogma of dialectical materialism.. . . En- gels speaks of Heraclitus as one of the precursors of dialectical materialism, and Heraclitus saw himself as a prophet and a seer; and for him the secret of the uni- verse lay in the ultimate reconciliation within the One of all conflicting oppo- sites.... Being and becoming are one: they are opposites, but they are inter- dependent opposites, and the union of opposites is no less fundamental to dia- lectical materialism than it is to Hera- clitus, Taoism, and the Upanishads.8

One could add that the whole mystical and cosmic theology of Teilhard de Char- din bears some analogies to dialectical materialism, which may account for the

respectful and favorable review The Phe- nomenon of Man received at the hands of Joseph Needham.9 For the basic assump- tion of Teilhard is his law of complexifica- tion-consciousness, according to which in- creasing patterns of complexity in matter are indissolubly linked with a correspond- ing degree of psychism, extremely low in the atom, but greatest in the Christ. Is not this cosmic structure analogous to the philosophy of dialectical materialism, in which dialectical syntheses in the or- ganization of matter are indissolubly link- ed with qualitative levels, the highest levels of mind never to be reduced to the levels of physics and chemistry? And may not one hazard the opinion that the fundamental conception of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Divine Sophia, the Holy Wisdom of God in the material creation associated with the all-important doctrine of "holy matter," may provide an avenue of reconciliation between such "holy matter" and the evolving matter of dialectical materialism-with its mys- tical overtones?

8 R. C. Zaehner, Matter and Spirit: Their Convergence in Eastern Religions, Marx, and Teilhard de Chardin (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), pp. 165-166.

9 Joseph Needham, "Review of The Phe- nomenon of Man", New Statesman, Vol. LVIII (Nov. 7, 1959), pp. 632-633.