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It's an interesting phrase and missionary complex upside down. If I might recall a name that still pains most Americans Harvey Lee Oswald. I have a Time article about Oswald he says in that article says I saw my mother as a worker. Oswald once said always with less than we could use a below average student he nonetheless read a lot and at 15 discovered Karl Marx's Das Capitale in his own words. It was like I quote a very religious man opening the Bible for the first time and quote he was as he himself explained quote looking for a key to my environment. I think at this point I owe it to you to outline my own basic suppositions about this whole subject so that you can accept them or reject them as you like.
First of all in looking at this subject I go on the assumption that religion is as ancient as earliest man and is universal to all known human societies and even though individuals within a society may not consider themselves religious societies. Every human society that we know anything about at least up to now has had religion as a base of it. This leads me to another separation and that is that religion is in fact a necessary component of every man's life and that if he drives religion out of the door of his consciousness it has a way of coming back in through the back window of his sub consciousness. And when this happens religion becomes disguised even to the subject himself. I should say especially to the subject itself. The subject finds his outlets in other ways.
And this leads me to the thought that communism is in fact a disguise or substitute religion for many people many many millions of people have found substitutes in still other forms of human endeavor. It's so common to hear in our society for that man God is the almighty dollar. After all this to the idolatry of the golden calf can become a kind of religion or substitute religion. At any rate man has to have something to live by. And if we permit ourselves a broad interpretation of religion this is it. For most of man's recorded history I maintain political power and religious appeal have been inseparable in ancient Persia in Egypt in ancient Israel indeed in present day Israel in Rome. Religion and politics have had to go hand in hand very closely and in Western civilization one finds.
Well just the very name Holy Roman Empire. The name of one of the most long lasting political creations of Western civilization is known technically not textbooks as the Holy Roman Empire or Westerners at least like to refer to Byzantine CS r o Pape it something in which the Caesars of Byzantium acted in fact like a Pope's in their own church. We know about the theocracy of Calvin's Geneva and of the Massachusetts Bay Colony or the Quaker State as Pennsylvania still known or Mormon Utah. And these are all of these have had their political connotations as well. Let me point out the divine right monarchy. It was known all the way from London to Moscow in Western civilization. It wasn't just the backward Russians quote unquote but it was the quote unquote civilized English who down through the 18th century
believed that kings being annoying to read in church at the time of their coronations were in fact sacrosanct to such a degree that if you brought to these kings people suffering from certain diseases all the king out to do was to touch this person and the person would be cured. Englishman actually. Proper sick people to kings to be touched by the royal touch to cure their diseases as late as the 18th century. In our own time the United States government has had to worry about the sacred deicing I'm sure there's no such word. The Japanese emperor after all generations and Japanese generations of people have been talked to believe that their own Emperor was divine and of divine origin and yet that the emperor of Japan himself took the lead in helping the United States occupation authorities in getting rid of that myth. In modern times its modern times means anyone think it means
secularization it means in many cases separation of church and state and certainly a decline in the religious outlook of the kind at least that produced the Medieval Age of Faith. But I submit that the religious outlook wasn't quite destroyed. That in many ways it was supplemented and even where it looks as though it disappeared. I think that modern nationalism has been for many people in the 18th 19th and 20th centuries a kind of religion in itself where the country becomes. I'm a sacred thing. I sometimes worry about this confusion of the political and religious. This is why I must admit publicly I have never felt comfortable about including the phrase under God in the oath of allegiance that we Americans recites for one thing I learned it the old way and it had a certain musical cadence and just musically metrically when you have to add under God something happens to interrupt the flow. As
I learned it I'm sure many of you must stumble over it. But the other thing is that I worry I don't I don't I don't. I think many of you know enough about me to realize that if I'm not exactly a practicing Christian I like to think of myself as one and an active one in my own church. I'm certainly far from being an atheist and yet it is precisely because I think of myself as a practicing Christian and I worry about this introducing under God into what should be a political oath of allegiance and I hate to I think too much of God to have been mixed up with a particular political formation at a particular time in history you say. And this offends me. It also offends me that we impose this on people who have no necessity of believing in God apparently and this is their right to do so. Religious conviction should be a personal matter in this case and not a public creed. But in the ancient empires there was no difference. This is why so many Christians were martyred in ancient Rome. They refused to take an oath of allegiance to a king to pagan Caesar's who
proclaimed themselves got in modern times then secularism the separation of these principles is the hallmark of modern progressive civilization but not everywhere. And not always even in our own society. In the French Revolution. They have many of you know the French Revolution was very anti-Catholic and they chased the Roman Catholic Church out of not to Domme Cathedral and in its place set up an altar to lot back to me to the fatherland that even they had a kind of religious service that was conducted in Oxford Dom Cathedral for a year or two. A secular service to the state is the highest and body meant the very phrase God's country worries me because of this. Communism is another one of these modern etiologies then that is to me a theocracy without the US without the god. Another hallmark of modern times it seems to me is the divorce between science and religion.
The 18th 18th century age of rationalism did that more than anything else in Western civilization. But the 19th century being sort of disparate the progressive enlightened man who who with whose mind was formed by the age of rationalism wasn't always strong enough to put all his faith in science the way scientists see it. He still needed a religion and yet he couldn't go back to the old time religion. And so what nineteenth century men very frequently did was to try to turn science into a religion as the key to all answers the unveiling of all mysteries sooner or later. It apathy assize science and try to relate it to human existence. And it's in this vein that I speak of Marx's scientific socialism as such an attempt a subconscious marriage of science and religion. I have
already spoken of the secularization of foreign policy and George Cannon's views on the subject that in modern times foreign policy has been conducted without reference to religious ideologies. Unlike the 15th and 16th centuries and 17th centuries in which marked the wars of religion in our society. But as George Kennan points out today we have to worry again about this crazy religious that is ideological factor in the conduct of foreign policy and we can no longer be sure as we confront the Soviet Union or any other communist country. To what degree we can predict their actions on the basis of their own self-interest and to what degree what they do is an emanation a reflection of their ideology. Now these are my basic suppositions and while I do not ask you to accept them I felt I owed it to you to tell you the prism through which I see this problem.
Now I know that we are up against the whole problem of definition here. For the purposes of looking at Communism as a religion I prefer to differentiate communism from socialism. Not in the way Marx does. Earlier when we talked about stages of history as seen by Marx socialism is a transitional phrase the phase between capitalism and communism in which according to Marx under socialism and the nationalization of the means of production men will work according to their capacities and gain rewards according to their work. Whereas under communism men will work according to their capacities and gain rewards according to their needs. This is the technical Marxian distinction between socialism and communism. But if I might turn to Nikolai good diet again. If he makes a distinction in this way
and I find it better for the purposes of this discussion he says socialism may be regarded as simply another socio economic theory on how to better the social organisation and economic organisation of human life. And a person holding any religion could be a socialist if he wished to without necessarily impairing his own religion. After all even though socialism is far from being a creed of the Roman Catholic Church we find it Sir Thomas More St. Thomas Moore still manages to be a saint in the church even though that particular aspect of his thought does not represent the official dogma of the church. A man can be a socialist and a Presbyterian or a Roman Catholic or a Moslem or a Unitarian or a vegetarian or whatever he wants to be without peril to himself as long as that socialism is regarded as simply a socio economic theory and does not
seek to impair the rights of others through violence. But communism even is an etiology says big. It is antithetical to other religions because it is also totalitarian as religions are now. OK now I know that this is going to sound offensive to people unless you understand the definitions that are being used here. I know that the word totalitarian in American ears in the middle of the 20th century means something like a political dictatorship especially Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia where there are secret police and concentration camps and barbed wire and people being who were awakened in the middle of the night and all of this. The word totalitarian is taken on that meaning. But if you look at the more profound and generic meaning of the word totalitarian when applied to an idiology what it means is that this is an idiology which demands the sum total of man's at hearings.
That's all totalitarian means in its ideological sense that it is an idiology which is not content to have just your political loyalty or your economic adherents or even your neutrality it won't even allow you to be neutral and say well I don't believe it but you go ahead and do whatever you want and I'll go along. This is a totalitarian ideology will not even tolerate that it wants the sum total of maque. It wants all of his thoughts and all of his allegiance now a totalitarian ideology of that sort is fascism. It is communism but it is also a great many religions. Let me not talk about your religion but my religion. The Eastern Orthodox religion. It demands of me not only participation in church services on Sundays and holidays and certain fasting and this that and the other it wants me to act like an Orthodox Christian all of the time in everything that I
do. It demands the sum total of of my allegiance without any reservations of this sort. And whether I'm capable of doing something of this sort is a personal and private matter but we're not talking about meat we're talking about my religion or what my religion demands of me not my religion does not force me to do this by waking me up in the middle of the night and sending me off to a concentration camp. Though there have been people in religious history who have been burnt at the stake and who have had other terrible things done to them in the name of this kind of totalitarianism. But at best at least a religionist can be and is frequently totalitarian in its demands without exerting the kinds of pressures and restrictive controls that are the features of modern political dictatorships. The difference in methods is
of course vital. But if you logically intellectually speaking what I'm saying is that we have both in many religions and in many etiologies today this strain of totalitarianism and I go along with 55 and when he says that if Communism is the enemy of religion as indeed it is it is not simply because it is anti-religious but because it is a competitor. It is another kind of religion a competitor for the total allegiance of man. Now we can quibble here about what definition of religion is and the fact that religion for most people introduces a supernatural or supernatural element. In this respect certainly communism is not a religion. It recognizes nothing outside of nature. But if you look carefully at how Marx and Marxist talk about nature it is sometimes very hard to distinguish between the terminology they use for
nature and the terminology that Thomas Aquinas uses in his definitions of God. Something that is uncreated and eternal and omniscient and all the rest of this one can apply much the same terminology. But this is not what interests me at the moment whether in some by some technical definition communism is a religion or not. We could talk about this on and on. But what is important to me is that communists. Who become communists from something else. Undergo a type of religious conversion such as I have described in the terms of Gessler. Now I'm well aware of the fact in the Soviet Union that we have a couple of generations now people who didn't have to be converted to anything they were born into it. They are sort of born communists they are no longer converted communists. But this of course is the way it is with most of
us who adhere to any religion. I suspect the statistically most of us who are Orthodox are Catholic or Lutheran or Jewish or whatever are this because that's the way we were born. And even if we stop being what we were born into and went around shopping for a religion chances are that we shopped around to something that could be as close to what we were without yet giving us all the problems that the previous thing with very few of us you know cut off completely. And if we do then there are other problems involved. But for the great majority I think we can agree for the great majority of people they belong to a religion because that's what they were born into. In the Soviet Union this is true to a much larger degree than in the other communist countries because the other communist countries had fallen under communist rule. Relatively recently. Where is the Soviet system has had a chance now to educate to indoctrinate a couple of generations of people. Now I'm not talking when I'm talking terms of religious conversion
I'm not talking either about those of us who are in a particular religion just because we're born into it and find it comfortable to remain. Nor am I talking about the Soviet citizen who has never known anything else and was born into the system. I'm not talking about the real converts who make the whole system of communism so dynamic in all of the non Soviet countries of the world. The Convert in that sense does undergo a total conversion very similar to a religious experience and art. This is why I quoted Arthur Kessler to be sure. Communism is an economic theory it is a historical theory it is a philosophy. It is an ethic but more importantly for many communists communism offers its adherent adherents a belief in what they regard as ultimate. The answer to every question. A key that fits all locks those Professor Boger points out it opens few doors.
Now what makes Marxism so beautiful it isn't just the appeal to the intellectual who likes the complete system but because the intellectuals themselves who have been converted to this like dislike tell us that it was this other thing as well as the intellectual aesthetic satisfaction it was this other thing that the answer to every question you found the key to the mysteries of the universe. The key. Well you know that some rosy Christian groups have the idea of the key to everything. Furthermore communism has given many people who might be otherwise aimless a purpose in life. We have in our own society people who suffer almost psychopathically from a sense of aimlessness and indifference that nothing matters anymore. We have all kinds of normal nice good people walking among us who walk around going through the motions of life as though from a sense of simply momentum this is how they got started and they keep on doing this though they were on some assembly line
and they don't know the beginnings of it or the end of it and they don't even get much enjoyment from it but this is what they do. There's a kind of aimlessness and especially in a capitalist society which has an indicted war and a socialist society which has an industrial system that takes up so much of their time if you're part of an assembly line civilization. Then after a while even the enjoyment of backyard grills and bowling games and all of this begins to pall and you begin to wonder what am I doing here and what is the purpose of all of this. And this is a common affliction of mankind only it seems to be more common in modern times as the complexities of life overtake us and alienate us from from a sense of belongingness to something. Communism is that kind of modern creed that comes to a person like that SA give you a purpose. And this is a sure fire purpose because it doesn't depend on you or me this purpose is the purpose of nature it's going through with certainty and you may as well get on the bandwagon and
enjoy working for something that's positive and you know it's going to happen and it isn't going to be a failure. On this we blow each other up completely. So there is a sense of purpose that I find very strong in the communist convert. He seems to know where he is going and what he's going to do and if he doesn't always know what he's going to do there's always the party to tell him and this is a great comfort. So a great comfort. Not we Americans sometimes overestimate. Individual freedom and what it and the responsibilities that it entails. We underestimate the desire of the person to want to be told. I know about every fourth semester I have the great pleasure of teaching freshman. I love to teach. And I see those wonderful half empty faces full of expectation in front of me and what they're saying is especially after the second week of lectures when they begin to understand that I just don't spout off the textbook but that I think of history in
terms of human problems and recurring human problems. It's a look of pain that comes over those young faces and you can see in what they're saying. PETROVICH please don't bother us don't make us think about these things after all this isn't fair. We came in here for you to tell us the truth. You give it to us in its six weeks examination we'll give it back to you and if we don't know something you tell us. You're the authority what are we paying our tuitions for you see. Now Eric from the marvelous book which is available in all kinds of editions escape from freedom in which he discusses this very point that so many Americans find difficult to understand and that is that many individuals are simply not strong enough to stand the responsibilities of freedom they don't want these responsibilities. It isn't that they are deprived of them. They don't want to come. For this perhaps the most profound statement of this ever made was by Dostoyevsky in his novel The brothers kind of Knights of the chapter of the
Grand Inquisitor where there is this clear dialogue between the Grand Inquisitor and Jesus Christ coming back to Earth in the second coming. I'm personally and barrister and I'm dismayed that dusty excuse should have turned this into an anti Roman Catholic diatribe when actually there was something far deeper to this. I wish she hadn't chosen the name Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition. This sort of thing. But what of what is involved here is the dialogue in which only one person is speaking the Grand Inquisitor Jesus doesn't say a word. He doesn't have to. We know what he has already said and would say on the subject. But the gist of the argument of the Grand Inquisitor is that we are like Terry in Church has taken over to make people happy by telling them what they must believe and what they must do. True we've taken their freedom away from them but we have made them happier by so doing because you Jesus Christ brought to the world the freedom
and most men can't stand your freedom. What they want is not your freedom they want bread and they want security. This is the gist of dusty Eskies argument that he puts in the mouth of the Grand Inquisitor not Eric strong takes up the same theme but in a very sophisticated way going through the historic ages to show that in every important conflict between security and freedom most men have chosen security at the price of freedom and that humans throughout history have shown an amazing and Durrance of political and other oppression as long as they have a sense of security and that they can improve themselves materially. Once they lose that then it's over. Not Communism comes and says Trust us we have the answer. We'll tell you what the answer is. This is the authority of nature capital and this is immutable law. You don't have to worry about how things are going or what the answer is. We have got the authority. We will
tell you Don't worry. And a lot of people feel secure in that. Another thing and I will end with this. Communism as Bishop Sheen has pointed out is a pseudo religion of salvation. It offers not only a better way of life quote unquote It offers a salvation from the wickedness of this world. Communism is a highly moralistic puritanical outlook. The fact that it sees conflict in the world as being a conflict between good and evil. Labor and Capital exploited an exploiter and a very simple way of looking at it. And that in a sense there is this guilt in the world that must be gotten away from. Communism is messianic in its appeal. It says that we will deliver you from this blood guilt. We will bring a world in which there will be no sin anymore because there is no cause for sand the cause for sin is the exploitation of others through the ownership of property in a way that exploits others.
And once we do away with that there will no longer be the same. Now this is a powerful appeal to many. Again I bring up something we have talked about so many times in this car so especially when you've asked me about hippies and other people in our own society. There is a feeling of guilt abroad in the land. Something isn't right and that somehow or other especially those of us who are well-off are responsible if for no other is not to blame. I didn't say blame but responsible if for no other reason that we are our brother's keeper in Russia in the 19th century the whole political social movement not argued just what populism was based I think on this complex of the guilt and conscience stricken landowner and nobleman who felt that certain but he was the only beneficiary of serfdom. And that this was the weakest system. And that in order to deliver himself from the bonds of guilt he had to
deliver all of Russia from serfdom. But that's just me. Remember I said I wish that Marx had lived after Freud the guilt complex is a very deep thinking people. And to that degree communism comes along as the authority that says don't worry we'll make it right for everybody and happy peaceable kingdom in which the lion will lay with the land and we will all be brothers to that degree certainly communism has a religious appeal. You have been listening to Professor Michael B Petrovich of the University of Wisconsin as he discussed a Marxism as an ethic and a secular religion. Next week he offers a discussion of Stalinism. And after these lectures are drawn from the 1967 Wisconsin Alumni seminar on the theory and practice of communism and I arranged for radio by W.H. a the University of Wisconsin began almost speaking. This is the
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Series
The theory and practice of communism
Episode
Marxism as an Ethic and a Secular R
Producing Organization
University of Wisconsin
WHA (Radio station : Madison, Wis.)
Contributing Organization
University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
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cpb-aacip/500-9s1kmz07
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Series Description
For series info, see Item 3358. This prog.: Marxism as an Ethic and a Secular Religion
Date
1968-04-01
Topics
Politics and Government
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Sound
Duration
00:29:44
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Producing Organization: University of Wisconsin
Producing Organization: WHA (Radio station : Madison, Wis.)
AAPB Contributor Holdings
University of Maryland
Identifier: 68-18-8 (National Association of Educational Broadcasters)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Duration: 00:29:30
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Chicago: “The theory and practice of communism; Marxism as an Ethic and a Secular R,” 1968-04-01, University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-9s1kmz07.
MLA: “The theory and practice of communism; Marxism as an Ethic and a Secular R.” 1968-04-01. University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-9s1kmz07>.
APA: The theory and practice of communism; Marxism as an Ethic and a Secular R. Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-9s1kmz07