Mysticism and Communism

Author(s): Alfred Stiernotte

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Spring, 1967), pp. 110-112
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of Society for the Scientific Study of Religion
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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.